LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

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VX1TK1) STATES OF AMERICA. 



i 



WHO WAS HE? 



SIX SHORT STORIES ABOUT SOME OF THE 



MYSTERIOUS CHARACTERS 



AND 



WELL-KEPT SECRETS OF MODERN TIMES. 



BY 

HENRY FREDERIC REDDALL, 

AUTHOR OF 

u From the Golden Gate to the Golden Horn," etc. 



NEW YORK: 
PHILLIPS & HUNT. 

CINCINNA TI : 
CRANSTON & ST OWE. 

1887. 




$ 



*A 



THE LIBRARY 
OF CONGRESS 
WASHINGTON 



Copyright, 1887, by 

PHILLIPS & HUNT, 

New York. 



PREFACE 




author's endeavor, in the follow- 
ing pages, has been to present 
in a popular and interesting 
manner the facts and fancies 
grouped around the more prom- 
inent and puzzling personal enigmas and 
well-kept secrets of history. Some of the 
themes treated are veritable "twice-told 
tales ; " yet others have been more or 
less thoroughly discussed by divers able pens; and, 
while much of the material is and must remain 
inaccessible to the general reader, it may be that 
the only novelty consists in thus grouping between 
a single cover the half-dozen intensely thrilling 
narratives herein presented. Of course, the choice 
of topics has been confined to those historical epi- 
sodes whose solution is surrounded by more or less 
of doubt and mystery. Such stories as those of 
the Pseudo-Byron, Psalmanazar, the False Demetrii, 



4 Preface. 

and the Chevalier D'Eon, though for a time suffi- 
ciently bewildering, cannot be properly described as 
historical enigmas; all these persons and their con- 
geners were nothing more than clever impostors, 
and their eventful narratives must be relegated to a 
separate volume. The present book has been penned 
with the view of acquainting our little men and 
women and our young men and maidens with some 
of the strangest personalities and most mysterious 
transactions that ever enlivened the page of history. 
Brooklyn, 1887. 



CONTENTS 



■*•• PAGE 

The Lost Heib op the Bourbons '. 7 



II. 

The Unknown op the Bastile 81 

III. 

The Youth Who Fell from Crown to Kitchen, and 
Some Similar Strange Stories 119 

IV. 
The Foundling op Nuremberg . 135 



V. 
The Wandering Jew 20 



7 



YI. 
Junius and the Junius Quest 249 



I. 

THE LOST HEIR OF THE BOURBONS. 



THE 

LOST HEIR OF THE BOURBONS. 




HE noble army of deathless ones — 
saints, warriors, and heroes — 
has received recruits in divers 
lands and among widely diver- 
gent peoples. An extreme re- 
luctance to believe in the mortality of its 
departed worthies has impelled mankind, 
in every age, to claim for some a perpetual 
existence — sleeping or waking — in various 
Edenic abodes of bliss; and this feeling is likewise 
responsible for much of the mythology of ancient 
races, as well as for the frequent more modern exam- 
ples of an extensive belief in the survival of certain 
favorites dear to the popular heart. 

The reader will recall, even as he scans these lines, 
the names of many heroes who have been relegated 
to the ranks of the " undying ones " by their admir- 



10 Who Was He? 

ers or their dupes, and who are or were confidently 
expected to revisit the earth at some future day, near 
or remote, in tenfold power and majesty, when they 
will confound their enemies and recompense their 
friends. Nearly every nation, it has been remarked, 
" has had its patron saint or hero who is not dead, 
but sleepeth, and who, in the hour of calamity, will 
surely arise to uphold the ancient liberties of his 
native land and spread consternation among its foes. 
The mythical Arthur of Britain proved himself in- 
vulnerable to every stroke until the treachery of his 
wife and his dearest friend overwhelmed him in 
ruin. But even then he did not die, and the old 
monkish chroniclers gravely tell of his occasional 
appearance and of his certain return in the future. 
So Charlemagne, William Tell, Boabdil, Sebastian, 
Frederick Barbarossa, and many other redoubtable 
w r arriors await in silence the angelic trumpet call to 
lead their armies again to victory. Mohammed's 
death was discredited by his disciples, and for years 
after the infamous Nero had met his fate his reap- 
pearance was looked for by the Koman populace. 
During the Middle Ages the common people of En- 
gland, with characteristic pertinacity, refused to be- 
lieve the reputed death of several of their princes, 



The Lost Heir of the Boukbons. 11 

and treasure and life were readily expended in behalf 
of worthless adventurers who personated the departed 
heroes." Macaulay has left us a vivid picture of the 
devotion of the English rabble to their idol, Mon- 
mouth. After the disaster at Sedgemoor, and the 
subsequent trial and execution of the duke, " such was 
the devotion of the people to their unhappy favorite 
that, in the face of the strongest evidence by which the 
fact of a death was ever verified, many continued to 
cherish a hope that he was still living, and that he 
would again appear in arms. A person, it was said, 
who was remarkablv like Monmouth, had sacrificed 
himself to save the Protestant hero. ,The vulgar 
long continued, at every important crisis, to whisper 
that the time was at hand, and that King Monmouth 
would soon show himself. In 1686, a knave who 
had pretended to be the duke, and had levied contri- 
butions in several villages of Wiltshire, was appre- 
hended, and whipped from Newgate to Tyburn. In 
1698, when England had long enjoyed constitutional 
freedom under a new dynasty, the son of an inn- 
keeper passed himself off on the yeomanry of Sussex 
as their beloved Monmouth, and defrauded many who 
w T ere by no means of the lowest class. Five hundred 
pounds were collected for him. The farmers pro- 



12. Who Was He? 

vided him with a horse. Their wives sent him bas- 
kets of chickens and ducks, and were lavish, it was 
said, of favors of a more tender kind ; for in gal- 
lantry, at least, the counterfeit was a not unworthy 
representative of the original. When this impostor 
was thrown into prison for his fraud, his followers 
maintained him in luxury. Several of them ap- 
peared at the bar to countenance him when he was 
tried at the Horsham Assizes. So long did this de- 
lusion last that when George III. had been some 
years on the English throne Voltaire thought it 
necessary gravely to confute the hypothesis that the 
Man in the Iron Mask was the Duke of Monmouth." 
In our own day the bucolic backwoodsmen of the 
west and south-west voted quadrennially for Andrew 
Jackson long after the decease of their beloved " Old 
Hickory," while the ignorant and faithful French 
peasantry still sturdily deny the defeat and death of 
Napoleon III. 

Oftentimes the testimony in favor of these myth- 
ical survivals seems all but conclusive to uncultured 
minds, while in other cases the circumstantial evi- 
dence is weighty enough to stagger the practiced 
observer. Hence it is that we frequently find men 
of acknowledged ability, whose names are a tower of 



The Lost Heir of the Bourbons. 13 

strength, ranging themselves on the side of the popu- 
lar belief, and by the power of their pens and the 
force of their influence propping a fabric that would, 
unaided, soon topple to earth. 

The attention of the reader is invited to one of the 
most interesting of these historical enigmas. Orig- 
inating in France, in the stormy epoch of the Terror, 
the drama was shifted to the hither side of the At- 
lantic, in the first half of the present century, with a 
minister — a missionary to a tribe of aborigines — and 
a prince of the blood royal of France as chief per- 
formers. The popular trait above alluded to is un- 
doubtedly partly responsible in this case for the 
belief that the hero of this episode survived, in an- 
other clime and amid other conditions, his reputed 
death. The case evoked a controversy as interesting 
as it w T as unique, and one that was not the less acri- 
monious because it was so short-lived.* 

* The literature of this controversy consists of Tlie Life, Suffer- 
ings, and Death of Louis XVII., by M. de Beauchesne; Vie Lost 
Prince, by the Rev. J. H. Hanson, published in New York ; various 
articles in the London Quarterly Revieiv for October, 1853, and in 
Putnam's Magazine for February, April, and July, 1853, aud Febru- 
ary, 1854; a review of the evidence, entitled "A Charge to the Jury 
in the Dauphin Case," in the Knickerbocker Magazine in 1854, of 
which an able summary, together with other matters of interest to 



14 Who Was He? 

The royal chateau at Versailles was the scene of 
more than ordinary gavety and rejoicing on March 
27, 1785, the occasion being the birth to Louis XVI. 
and his queen, Marie Antoinette, of a young prince, 
their second Eon, who, we are told, opened his eyes 
on this stormy world at five minutes before seven in 
the evening. The king and his court signalized the 
occasion by going to the palace to hear a grand Te 
Deum sung in honor of the event. The infant was 
christened Charles Louis, the ceremony being per- 
formed by the Cardinal de Rohan — he who, the year 
before, had been so scandalously implicated in the 
Affair of the Diamond Necklace. 

Though reared in a royal chateau, the boy grew 
and prospered much as other children. When four 
years of age his winning ways won the hearts of all. 
In appearance he exhibited a slight, but well-shaped, 
body, a broad and open forehead, finely arched eye- 
brows, and large blue eyes, a fair and rosy complex- 
ion, with dark chestnut curls falling in ringlets on 

those versed in the case, appeared in the columns of the New York 
I ling Post in 1883. In the same journal may also be found a let- 
ter from its Pans correspondent, Mr. I'M ward Kinp, on the hist days 
of Louis XVII. Reference will be made hereafter to each and all of 
the above. 



The Lost Heir of the Bourbons. , 15 

his shoulders. Though his countenance favored both 
parents, the likeness to Marie Antoinette was most 
marked. He was of a lively, yet tractable, disposi- 
tion, very affectionate, and quick to learn. A t a later 
period it was said of him : " He appears to be both 
thoughtful and bold, and endowed with a quick sense 
of his own rights and of what justice demands in re- 
spect of others." 

His elder brother, the little Duke of Normandy, 
died when Charles Louis was four years old, and he 
thus became the heir-apparent to the throne of 
France. 

The mutterings of the coming tempest that was to 
shake France to its center, and whose reverberations 
were to be heard with terror and dismay by every 
crowned head in Europe, were inaudible to the child 
nurtured amid the peaceful recesses of Versailles. 
The days passed brightly with the little prince, but 
their tranquillity was destined soon to be troubled and 
disturbed. 

The summer of 1789 witnessed the first of those 
great tumults to which the populace of Paris, ever 
prone to riot and insurrection, were urged by scarcity 
of food, by vague and alarming rumors of wars and 
massacres, and by desperation arising out of their 



16 Who Was He? 

hopeless aristocrat- and priest-ridden condition. The 
States-General met, for the first time in many years, 
on May 5, and constituted itself the " National As- 
sembly" on June 17. Thenceforward event suc- 
ceeded event with startling and dramatic suddenness. 
The Bastile was stormed and sacked on July 14, the 
title of the monarch was changed from " King of 
France " to that of " King of the French," the prop- 
erty of the Church and the clergy was confiscated, 
and the emigration of the nobles and gentry speedily 
followed. 

In the capital the dearth of bread stirred the pas- 
sions of the people. On the morning of October 4, 
1789, the authorities of the Hotel de Ville having 
proved unable to deal with the emergency, " some- 
body suggested the bold expedient of going to Ver- 
sailles to fetch the king." Led by Stanislas Mail- 
lard, a mob of eight thousand infuriated women, 
followed by some hundreds of armed insurgents — a 
hungry, excited, undrilled multitude — entered the 
royal city of Versailles, chanting revolutionary bal- 
lads. They were led by Maillard first to the Na- 
tional Assembly, where a few were allowed to enter 
and present the plea of the citizens for bread. But 
the Assembly was as powerless to afford relief as the 



The Lost Heir of the Bourbons. 17 

city fathers of Paris had been. So on the morrow 
the royal residence was besieged, and the king and 
his family commanded and compelled to remove to 
the capital. Escorted by the National Assembly, 
which had voted its inseparability from his majesty, 
by thousands of the National Guard, and by tens of 
thousands of his turbulent subjects, Louis XVI., his 
wife, and his children, Marie Therese and Louis, left 
Versailles never to return. 

There was no attempt at order among the noisy 
rabble. " Clinging to his mother in terror of the 
horde of wild-looking men and women who were 
shouting in demoniac laughter, the dauphin entered 
one of the coaches, the queen alternately trying to 
pacify his fears and to look with calmness on the 
terrific throng. Already blood had been shed. The 
mob, in forcing the palace, had killed two of the 
guards who defended the queen's apartments from 
outrage, and with the heads of these unfortunate and 
brave men stuck on the end of pikes, a party pre- 
ceded the royal carriages to Paris." On the way 
they halted at Sevres, and compelled a barber to 
dress the dripping heads according to the prevailing 
fashion. 

In the rear of this band caine the noisy procession 
2 



18 Who Was He ? 

of soldiers, citizens, and women, some riding astride 
of cannon or clinging to the gun-carriages, some car- 
rying pikes and muskets, and the majority waving 
branches of the poplar trees so plentiful thereabouts. 
In the course of the journey, which occupied many 
hours, the royal prisoners were constantly reviled by 
the riff-raff of the metropolis, who surged about the 
carriages. In this species of abuse the women were 
foremost and readiest. The scarcity of bread, though 
owing entirely to natural causes, was imputed to the 
king's influence, and now that he was in the hands of 
the mob they believed that the counters of the bake- 
shops would once more groan beneath the weight of 
the staff of life. "We shall no longer," they shouted 
at the windows of the royal carriages, " we shall no 
longer want bread ; we have the bakers wife and the 
baker's boy with us! " Amid such a scene of tumult 
and terror was the child launched on the stormy 
tide of the French Revolution that was to bear him 
on its bosom to his doom. 

Thus far what was destined to be the greatest 
social upheaval of modern times had not shed much 
blood. On July 14, 1790, one year from the fall of 
the Bastile, the Confederation of the Champ de Mars 
declared France a limited monarchy, and Louis XVI. 



The Lost Heir of the Bourbons. 19 

swore to maintain the constitution. But with the 
death of Mirabeau, who w r as the master-spirit of the 
National Assembly, which occurred April 2, 1791, 
the cunning hand that had guided, developed, and 
given outward form to the revolution was removed 
from the helm, and chaos and confusion soon had full 
sway in unhappy France. The position of the king 
soon became so irksome that he attempted, in June, 
1791, to escape with his family from Paris, but the 
scheme miscarried, and the fugitives were arrested at 
Varennes and forced to return. By the insurrection 
of August 10 of the same year the Jacobins, led by 
Danton and Robespierre, " effected the total subver- 
sion of the monarchy, and inaugurated the Reign of 
Terror." " There is now no king in France ! " ex- 
claimed the monarch on reading of his deposition. 
The king and his family were removed from the 
Tuilleries and confined in the tower of the Temple, 
which became their prison, and which some of them 
only exchanged for the guillotine-cart and the grave, 
Louis being executed January 21, 1793, and Marie 
Antoinette in the following October. 

We are told that the Temple, " though now no 
longer in existence, once held an important place 
among the historical monuments of Paris. It de- 



20 Who Was He 3 

rived its name from the Templars, the first of the 
military and religious orders founded in the twelfth 
century for the defense of the Holy Sepulcher at 
Jerusalem. In 1792 it consisted of a large square 
tower. Hanked at its four angles by four round 
towers, and having on the north side another sep- 
arate tower, or keep, of less dimensions than the first, 
surmounted by turrets, and called the White Tower." 
Here apartments were prepared for the royal family, 
but after a time the king was, by order of the As- 
sembly, confined separately in the Great Tower, and 
only allowed to spend a portion of each day with his 
family. 

Throughout these troublous times the little Charles 
Louis figures inconspicuously. Too young to appreci- 
ate the immense consequence to himself of the events 
happening around him, he knew not the value of the 
heritage he had lost through his father's deposition. 
As we have seen, on August 13, 1791, together 
witli his parents, his sister, and his aunt, he took up 
his abode in the Temple. Two years later he emerged 
thence, but whether dead or alive, whether in a coffin 
or living and cunningly disguised, is not certainly 
known. 

Louis XVI. seems, from the first day of his actual 



The Lost Heir of the Bourbons. 21 

imprisonment, to Lave realized that the current of 
events was hurrying him toward a fatal goal. But 
while life remained there was for him no greater 
pleasure than to resume the interrupted education of 
his son, and in this occupation he apparently forgot 
his troubles. M. de Beauchesne says of the dauphin 
at this time : " In this child of six and a half years 
old there was a combination of force and grace rare 
even in the most highly endowed natures. Some- 
times the seriousness of his thought gave his conver-. 
sation a character full of nobleness ; sometimes, on 
the contrary, the frank playfulness of his years shone 
forth without regrets and without desires. Already 
he thought no more of past greatness ; he was happy 
to live, and he was only turned to grief by the tears 
which sometimes stole down his mother's cheeks. 
He never spoke of the games and walks of other 
days ; he never uttered the name of Versailles or of 
the Tuilleries ; he seemed to regret nothing." 

The close affection subsisting between the members 
of this little circle in the gloomy tower, far above the 
rumble and roar of the turbulent city, served to unite 
them more closely in this hour of trial and danger. 
There are on record many pen -pictures of scenes 
from their daily life, most of them written in after 



22 Who Was He? 

life by the Princess Marie Therese (who became 
eventually the Duchess d'Angouleme). Here is one, 
describing the efforts of the king to at once amuse 
and instruct the boy : 

" Louis," said lie, " what is that which is white and 
black, weighs not an ounce, travels night and day like 
the wind, and tells a thousand things without speak- 
ing?" 

" It must be a horse," answered the dauphin, after 
a spell of thinking. " A horse may be white and 
black ; a horse runs races, and a horse does not speak. " 

" So far so good, my boy ; but a horse weighs more 
than an ounce, and I never heard of his telling any 
news." 

"Ah, now I have it!" and the young prince's 
merry peal of laughter almost awoke an answering 
echo from the anxious group of listeners. " It is a 
newspaper ! " 

" Here is another question for you, Louis," re- 
sumes the king. " Who is she, the most beautiful, 
the noblest, the best — " 

"Who but my mother!" interrupts the lad, 
springing into the queen's arms. 

" But you did not give me time to finish," says his 
father. " I asked you who is the most beautiful, the 



The Lost Heir of the Boukbons. 23 

best, the noblest, and who yet repels the greater part 
of mankind ? " 

" It is Truth," replied the prince ; u but I did not 
guess it myself; my sister whispered it to me." 

The autumn and winter of 1792 passed with no 
amelioration or hope of change in the condition of 
the royal prisoners. When Louis XVI. was removed 
to the great tower it was decreed that the dauphin 
should accompany him. He was permitted to see 
his mother only at those times when the king was 
suffered to join his family — an hour or two daily — 
and this brutal separation so grieved him that, though 
usually of a sunny and sweet temper, he let no op- 
portunity pass of showing his resentment to the jail- 
ers. One of them, who thought the young prince 
did not treat him with sufficient respect, said : 

" Do you not know that liberty has rendered us 
free, and that now we are all equal ? " 

" Equal, if you like," replied the dauphin, glancing 
toward his father, " but it is not in this place you will 
persuade me that liberty has made us free." 

When the king was arraigned and tried for his life 
Louis was once again relegated to his mother's care. 
Upon the day before that on which the king was to 
meet his death at the guillotine a farewell interview 



24 AViio AVas He? 

was allowed the unhappy monarch and his loved 
ones. They met with embracings and sobbings, but 
after a while " the king sat down, the queen placed 
herself on his left hand, Madame Elizabeth on hjs 
right, Marie Therese jnst before him, and the young 
prince stood between his father's knees." The king 
made all promise that they would never attempt to 
avenge his death. This was the final parting. 

After the death of Louis XVI. the survivors were 
permitted to dwell together in the same chambers. 
The queen and Madame Elizabeth, the sister of the 
king, continued the task of educating the children. 
Some months passed in this outwardly tranquil man- 
ner, only faint echoes from the outer world reaching 
the ears of the prisoners in the Temple. But a harsh 
change was at hand. On July 1, 1793, the following 
decree appeared : 

" The Committee of Public Safet} r decrees that the 
son of Capet be separated from his mother, and com- 
mitted to the charge of a tutor, to be chosen by the 
Council-General of the Commune." 

On the third of the month, at ten in the evening, 
while the prince was sleeping, the two ladies were 
aroused by the tread of many feet. Hoarse and bru- 
tal voices were heard without. Bolts and bars were 



The Lost Heir of the Bourbons. 25 

shot back, and a band of six delegates from the Com- 
mune entered the room. 

" We are come," one of them explained, " to ac- 
quaint you with an order from the committee that 
the son of Capet be separated from his mother and 
family." 

The queen rose, for a moment pale and speechless 
at the suddenness of this dastard attack. 

" Take my child from me ! " at length she gasped. 
" No, no ; it is not possible ! " Marie Therese and 
Madame Elizabeth stood by in tears. 

" Gentlemen," said the queen, steadying her voice, 
" the Commune cannot think of separating me from 
my son ! " 

But the committee's emissaries were inexorable. 
Tears, prayers, entreaties, were of no avail. Aroused 
by the tumult the young Louis awoke, and sat up on 
his narrow couch. The messengers would permit no 
delay, and the wretched queen was forced to part 
from her darling. With eyes red with weeping, and 
with fingers that trembled with emotion, she drew 
on his little garments. At length the mournful task 
was completed, and, seating herself, she drew the boy 
to her heart, and, with forced composure, thus ad- 
dressed him : 



20 Who Was He? 

" My child, we are going to part. Remember 
your duty when I am no longer present to remind 
you of it. Never forget the good God who tries 
your faith, nor your mother who loves you. Be 
good, patient, and straightforward, and your Father 
will bless you in heaven." 

Then she strained him to her bosom, and with a 
passionate embrace they parted. 

Mother and son never met again. In their daily 
walks around the narrow prison gallery she some- 
times saw his face from a distance through the chinks 
of a railing, herself unseen ; this was all. On Octo- 
ber 16, 1793, the unhappy Marie Antoinette followed 
in her husband's footsteps along the pathway to the 
scaifold. 

And now, separated from both parents by death, 
and from sister and aunt by a cruel confinement, let 
us see how it fared with the little dauphin. Here 
we shall follow the narrative of Beauchesne, which 
voices the generally accepted view, that Louis XVII. 
died of neglect or of poison in the Temple ; present- 
ing the adverse view further on. 

[Jpon leaving his mother the dauphin and his six 
guards were conducted by a jailer to the chamber in 
the great tower formerly occupied by the king, and 



The Lost Heir of the Bourbons. 27 

there Louis was placed in charge of a " tutor." This 
was a neighbor of Marat, who lived next door to hira 
in the Rue des Cordeliers — a man who had former- 
ly been a cobbler, but whom the whirligig of the 
revolution had cast upon the surface of the bubbling 
current of events, and who had been one of the six 
commissioners appointed to supervise the confine- 
ment of the royal family in the temple. His name 
was Simon. He was coarse, ignorant, and unscrupu- 
lous by nature, and in person ill-favored. He had 
attained some prominence among his fellows by his 
contemptuous and insulting treatment of the illustri- 
ous prisoners, and he let slip no opportunity of show- 
ing his ultra-democracy. 

When the young Louis was torn from his mother, 
like a tender shoot from its protecting parent stem, 
she was grandiloquently assured that the nation, "al- 
ways great and generous," would provide for his 
education. Simon, the shoemaker, was the person 
selected by Marat and Robespierre to execute the 
promise. He was paid a salary of four hundred 
francs a month " on condition that he was never to 
leave his prisoner, or on any pretense whatever to quit 
the tower." Madame Simon, not quite as coarse and 
brutal as her husband, and who showed herself capa- 



Who Was He? 

ble of many acts of womanly tenderness, assisted liim 
in his duties. This, then, was the couple to whose 
tender mercies the child, reared amid kindness, refine- 
ment, and luxury, was now delivered. 

Upon his appointment Simon inquired of the 
Committee of Safety : 

" What is to be done with the young wolf ? " 
" I will tame him," he said ; " but what, after all, is 
desired ? Carry him away i " 

" No." 

"Kill him ?" 

" No." 

" Poison him % " 

" No." 

" What then?" 

" Get rid of him." 

This was a distinction without a difference which 
the brutal brain of Simon could not detect, but his 
cruel animal instincts prompted him none the less 
surely to carry it into effect. He failed — but that 
was not his fault. 

Prostrated by grief the boy passed the first night 
in tears. The next morning his proud spirit took 
refuge in a dogged silence, and for the first two days 
he refused to accept aught but a morsel of bread 



The Lost Heir of the Bourbons. £9 

from bis keeper's hands. Taunts, threats, and the 
vilest abuse were continually hurled at the inoffens- 
ive child, and it would seem that Simon's settled 
plan was to render his ward as miserable as possible. 
For every little act of so-called insubordination, blows 
soon came to be regularly inflicted. Hibald songs 
were sung in his hearing, and the descendant of a 
line of kings was compelled to join in the scurrilous 
chorus, in which the names of his parents were held 
up to derision. 

Simon added drunkenness to his other vices, and 
draughts of fiery liquor were forcibly poured 
down the boy's throat until he became stupefied. 
Such was the admirable manner in which Simon 
sought to " educate " his pupil. His severity and 
brutality increased as time wore on. Indeed, it has 
been asserted, with great probability, that he was 
but the tool of others, and was only carrying out 
secret orders looking to the slow murder of the " son 
of the tyrant," as the little Louis was termed by the 
infuriated rabble of Paris. But the crowning in- 
iquity of his jailers lay in compelling the boy to 
repeat and sign a scandalous charge against his own 
mother, Marie Antoinette, which was used against her 
on her trial. After this infamy a settled melancholy 



30 Who Was He? 

took possession of the dauphin, though at the time he 
knew not what use had been made of the extorted 
falsehood. 

One day a rumor became current in Paris, causing 
great excitement, that the dauphin had been spirited 
away from the Temple by General Dillon and others, 
and that he had escaped to England. The story 
proved to be only a canard, but from that time on a 
system of espionage was adopted as effective as it was 
cumbrous. The whole city was divided into forty 
districts ; from each of these a commissioner was 
chosen, whose sole duty it was to visit the prince 
once each day, and see that he was properly guarded. 
Each commissioner saw him but once, and with this 
visit his official term expired. 

Louis was never informed of the death of his 
mother, Marie Antoinette, nor of his aunt, the Prin- 
cess de Lamballe, and his repeated requests to be 
allowed to see them once again were answered with 
curses and reproaches. Again and again the little 
fellow appealed to the official visitors for protection, 
but they did nothing for his relief. Simon was a 
partisan of Marat — in fact, owed his place to him — 
and the day after the assassination of the demagogue 
by the dagger of Charlotte Corday, July 14, 1793, 



The Lost Heir of the Bourbons. 31 

the news of the event penetrated within the prison 
walls, and plunged the gloomy place into great ex- 
citement. Simon began to drink heavily, and that 
he might hear something of the uproar in the streets 
of Paris he ordered his wife and Louis to the rampart 
of the great tower. 

" Capet," said he, " do you hear these noises down 
there ? They are the groans of the people round the 
death-bed of their friend. I did intend to have 
made you leave ofl: your black clothes to-morrow, but 
you shall keep them on now. Capet shall wear 
mourning for Marat." 

Then turning round, and swearing furiously, he 
proceeded : 

" You don't looked distressed at all ; you are glad 
of his death." 

" I did not know the person who is dead," replied 
the child. " Don't think that I am glad of it ; we do 
not wish for the death of any one." 

"Ah, we do not wish, don't we! Do you pre- 
tend to talk to us in the style of your tyrants of 
fathers \ " 

" I said we in the plural," rejoined the boy; " for 
my family and myself." 

A few days after this event the whim seized the 



32 Who Was He? 

jailer that the child should be attired in red, the 
color of the Commune. His black garments — the 
mourning for his father — were taken away, so he had 
no choice but to don the hated color. But when it 
came to placing the red " liberty " cap on his head 
his spirit revolted, and he dashed it on the ground, 
saying he would go bareheaded. 

" Let him alone," said Madame Simon, " he will 
come to reason." 

To assist in bringing him to such a desirable state 
of mind the worthy woman cut off his long and silky 
curls, whereupon, in shame at the shearing, Louis 
yielded, and donned the hated article. 
Said Simon, elated at his triumph : 
" Capet, after all I believe you're a Jacobin." 
Among the duties which were forced on this lad, 
in whose veins flowed the blood of a long line of 
illustrious kings, were the cleaning and polishing of 
Madame Simon's shoes, the kindling of fires, the car- 
rying of a foot-stove to her bed-side when she rose, 
and other similar menial tasks. 

The foregoing are but a few of the atrocities of 
the Simon regime. Happily, it was short-lived ; yet 
in those few brief months irreparable injury had 
been wrought to the tender mind and body of the 



The Lost Heir of the Bourbons. 33 

little Louis. Simon held his office from July 3, 
1793, to January 19, 1794, when he was dismissed 
by the Council-General. The Committee of Public 
Safety " had cause to regard the monster's services 
as useless, and were of opinion that the members of 
the council alone ought to superintend the Prisoner 
of the Temple. Four of them were accordingly ap- 
pointed to the charge, and the dauphin was thence- 
forth su5jected to a more rigorous treatment than 
before." 

Louis was now nearly nine years old. His face 
was pale with sorrow, and his body emaciated with 
privation, abuse, and hardship. The new arrange- 
ments, we are told, " were concerted by Hebert and 
Chaumette — two of the most hateful characters that 
appear in the Eevolution — and were such as reflected 
the merciless savagery of their natures. They re- 
stricted the prisoner's habitation to a single room — a 
back chamber, without outlooks or connection, save 
with another room in front. The door of communi- 
cation between the two was cut down, so as to leave 
it breast high, fastened with nails and screws, and 
grated from top to bottom with bars of iron. Half- 
way up was placed a shelf, on which the bars opened, 

forming a sort of wicket, closed by other movable 
3 



34 Who Was He? 

bars, and fastened with an enormous padlock. By 
this wicket his coarse food was passed in to little 
Capet, and it was on the ledge that he had to put 
whatever he wanted to send away. It was the sys- 
tem of solitary confinement. . He had room to walk 
in, a bed to lie upon ; he had bread and water and 
linen and clothes, but lie had neither fire nor candle. 
His room was warmed only by a stove-pipe, the stove 
being placed in the outer room ; it was lighted only 
by the gleam of a lamp suspended opposite the grat- 
ing, through the bars of which, also, it was that the 
stovepipe passed. By a fatal coincidence, the royal 
orphan was transferred to his new prison on the an- 
niversary of the day of his father's execution. 

" But there was neither date nor anniversary for 
him thenceforth ; months and weeks, day and night, 
the dancing hours as they sped round in their rota- 
tion — all were confused together in his mind, and 
produced only the impression of a continuous, un- 
varying perpetuity of suffering. Shut up in dim 
seclusion, with nothing but his thoughts and the 
most painful remembrances to dwell upon, the heavy 
hours rolled on in slow succession, prolonging and 
intensifying only a monotonous sensation of abandon- 
ment and isolation. The fresh air of heaven never 



The Lost Heir of the Bourbons. 35 

came into his chamber ; the light was dim that en- 
tered through the gratings; the victim did not see 
the hand that passed his food through the grated 
door ; often he was left to shiver in the coldest 
weather without heat ; and at other times his prison 
was like a furnace from the reckless heaping of too 
much fuel in the stove. He heard no sound but the 
clang of bolts ; no one came to cleanse his room, no 
one visited him when he was sick or ministered to him 
in the helplessness of his prostration. Only, as the day 
closed in, a stern voice would call to him and command 
him to go to bed, that the municipality might not be 
burdened by providing him with a light. His food was 
a watery soup, with some bits of bread in it, of which 
he received only two little portions in a day, along 
with a morsel of beef, a loaf, and a pitcher of water. 
His bed — a palliasse and a mattress — which he was 
left to manage as he pleased, soon became unfit to 
sleep in, and no one cared to restore it to a state of 
wholesomeness and order. The commissaries of the 
Commune, who were removed daily, were almost all 
men of that ignoble class which the Leavings of the 
Revolution had now raised to the surface of society. 
The food, the health, the existence of the child, were 
of no concern to them ; their vigilance was limited 



36 Who Was He ? 

to the watching of his person, that they might give 
an account of him from day to day, and pass him 
over to the charge of those who succeeded them in the 
duty. Most of them were cruel by nature, and the 
rest were rendered so by fear ; the least mercy or 
leniency being certain to be construed into defect- 
ive patriotism or sympathy with tyrants. Thus the 
invariable treatment of the little prisoner was one of 
uncompromising harshness. No one for a moment 
was aifected by any consideration for his comfort or 
convenience." 

If the settled purpose of his captors had been to 
worry the life out of the frail body they could not 
have chosen titter measures. All this while, says the 
Abbe Beauchesne, 

" The general citizens of Paris had no definite con- 
ception of what was going on within the Temple ; the 
only rumor that reached them being to the effect that 
the health of the dauphin was visibly declining, and 
that he had become at length so much reduced as to 
be unable to stand or sit from weakness. Such was 
the state of matters when, after the fall of Robes- 
pierre, Barras, the new dictator, with several mem- 
bers of the committees and deputies of the conven- 
tion visited the Temple, to double the guard there, 



The Lost Heir of the Bourbons. 37 

and receive from tlie troops the oath of fidelity to 
the new government. From some motive of interest 
or policy Barras conceived that, independently of the 
municipals, who relieved each other daily at the 
tower, it would be desirable to have a permanent 
agent stationed there, in whom the government could 
repose entire confidence. Accordingly, on his propo- 
sition, the committee appointed Citizen Laurent to 
be official keeper to the royal children, and forthwith 
installed him in the Temple." 

It affords some slight gratification to the student of 
this hideous tale to learn that our friend Simon went 
to the guillotine in company with Robespierre and 
other worthies. The day after that event Laurent 
arrived at the Temple to assume charge of his new 
trust. It was two o'clock in the morning before the 
official preliminaries were concluded and the munic- 
ipals were ready to turn over their prisoner to his 
new keeper. Arriving at the cell of the child his 
name was called loudly many times ere a feeble an- 
swer issued from the interior. Louis was too weak 
to rise and come to the wicket, so it was only at the 
distance of several feet, and by the feeble light of a 
lantern, that Laurent caught his first glimpse of his 
ward. What he saw, however, was enough to arouse 



38 Who Was He? 

in hiin feelings of horror and disgust. On the ensu- 
ing morning he informed the Committee of Public 
Safety, and requested them to make a personal exam- 
ination of the little prisoner and his surroundings. 
In response to this appeal certain members of the 
committee did visit Louis, and expressed themselves 
as horrified and disgusted at what they witnessed ; 
but their visit of inspection terminated without any 
definite instructions to Laurent. 

But the latter was at once a humane man and a 
man of action. Here is what he found : " In a dark 
room, exhaling an odor of corruption, on a dirty, un- 
made bed, barely covered with a filthy cloth and a 
pair of ragged trousers, a child of nine years old was 
lying motionless, his back bent, his face wan and 
wasted, and all his features exhibiting an expression 
of mournful apathy and rigid unintelligence. He 
found his head and neck fretted with sores ; his legs 
and arms disproportionately lengthened ; his knees 
and legs covered with blue and yellow swellings ; his 
hands and fingers disfigured so as to have no resem- 
blance to human flesh, and his nails grown long and 
horny like the claws of a wild animal. On his tem- 
ples his once beautiful hair was matted for want of 
combing, and his scalp exhibited an inveterate growth 



The Lost Heir of the Bourbons. 39 

of dandruff, while from head to foot his whole body 
was covered with vermin." On the table was his last 
meal, scarcely touched, and on being asked several times 
why he did not eat he at length answered briefly : 

" I wish to die." 

Laurent took speedy steps to remedy this horrible 
condition of affairs. The room was cleansed and re- 
furnished, new clothes were provided for the child, 
his person was attended to, and in a short time the 
orphan was restored to a condition of comparative 
wholesomeness. His mental faculties also revived 
somewhat, and from an apathetic and dull-eyed re- 
ception of these attentions he came to regard his 
benefactor with symptoms of affection. 

But Laurent found tlfe task of constant attention 
at the Temple too onerous, so he petitioned for a col- 
league, and one Gomin, a royalist, was appointed to 
that post. When Laurent, in March, 1795, finally 
left the Temple on account of the pressure of his 
private affairs, he was succeeded by Etienne Lasne, a 
captain in the National Guard, and these two, Lasne 
and Gomin, remained with the prince until his re- 
ported death. Under their sway, through some se- 
cret influence, the discipline of the prison was much 
relaxed. 



40 Who Was He? 

The seeds of disease, however, added to an inher- 
ited scrofulous taint, had been too deeply sown in the 
constitution of the little captive during his cruel im- 
prisonment to yield to any such kindnesses as were 
now showered upon him. He was obviously growing 
weaker day by day. 

In May, 1795, Lasne and Gomin reported to their 
superiors that "the little Capet is dangerously 
ill." In their next report they say, " It is .feared 
he will not live," and immediately a physician, 
Dr. Desault, was despatched to attend on him. 
He reported that the patient was in no immediate 
danger, and established a mild system of treatment. 
Desault was a surgeon of unblemished probity. He 
attended daily up to May 30, until which time there 
was no appreciable change in the dauphin's health. 
On June 1, however, Dr. Desault died suddenly and 
mysteriously. Simultaneously the child was reported 
to be much worse, and on June 5 another physician, 
Dr. Pelletan, was appointed. He had never seen the 
prince before. He found the child, he says, " in so 
sad a state " that he demanded instantly " that an- 
other professional person be joined with me to re- 
lieve me from a burden I did not wish to bear 
alone." On June 7 M. Dumangin, chief physician 



The Lost Heir of the Bourbons. 41 

to the Hospital of the Unity, was detailed to assist 
M. Pelletan. 

But at half-past two on the afternoon of June 8 
the Orphan of the Temple ceased to breathe. A post- 
mortem examination was held, and the cause of death 
declared to be " of a scrofulous nature and of long 
standing." The body was buried in the cemetery of 
L'Eglise Ste. Marguerite on June 10. 

"Whether it was Louis XVII. who died, and was 
then and there buried, is the question upon which the 
whole of the succeeding controversy rests. 

Thus far we have followed what may be termed 
the " orthodox " account of the fate of Louis XVIL, 
the version which Louis XVIII. and his niece, the 
Duchess d'Angouleme (sister of the dauphin, and his 
fellow-prisoner in the Temple), feigned to believe and 
wished all the world to adopt. That there were and 
are weighty reasons for believing it to be apocryphal 
we shall proceed to show. To the Rev. J. H. Han- 
son belongs the credit of first presenting, in 1853, the 
evidence on this 'point in a masterly and most con- 
vincing shape, though his accompanying effort to 
identify the dauphin with a then living, character 
cannot be said to have been crowned with success. 

What are the reasons prompting the belief that 



42 Who Was He? 

Louis XVII. did not die in the Temple, that he was 
clandestinely removed prior to June 8, and that an- 
other boy was substituted in his place, whose body it 
was upon which Pelletan and Dumangin performed 
their autopsy, while the real dauphin was transported 
to a foreign clime, there to drag out the remainder 
of his existence in obscurity ? 

At the death of Louis XYI. the little dauphin, 
Charles Louis, became the rightful king of France. 
During all the stormy period from 1788 to 1793 the 
king's brothers, the Comte de Provence and the 
Comte d'Artois, were ever on the alert to trim their 
conduct so as to best serve their own fortunes. In 
his will Louis XYI. does not commend his son to the 
care of his uncles, but to that of his aunt, the Prin- 
cess Elizabeth, and his sister, who afterward became 
the Duchess d'Angouleme. After the execution of 
the kino: the Comte de Provence became the self- 
appointed regent of France ? the guardian of Louis, 
and the heir-presumptive to the throne. In 1S15 he 
actually became king as Louis XVIII. From the 
death of Louis XVI. to the reputed death of his son 
both Provence and Artois, particularly the former, 
coquetted with the Vendean army, intrigued with the 
government at Paris, and plotted with foreign courts 



The Lost Heir of the Bourbons. 43 

for their own aggrandizement, while the true heir lay 
rotting in the tower of the Temple. Without making 
any specific charges, it is clear that it was to the 
manifest interest of the Comte de Provence that 
Louis XVII. should never be heard of again. His 
overweening ambition to be king of France is too 
well known to need more than a passing reference 
here. 

What Mr. Hanson and those who think with him 
insist is the true version of the dauphin's fate may 
be briefly outlined as follows : With the introduction 
of Lasne and Gomin to the keepership in the Temple 
the rigor of the child's imprisonment was much relaxed 
— purposely so. Gomin was a royalist, believed to 
be in the pay of the Comte de Provence, and Lasne 
was only a moderate republican. A compact had 
been made by the government in Paris with Charette, 
the Vendean general, for the delivery of the dauphin 
as a condition of peace. To this arrangement the 
Comte de Provence had assented, though, of course, 
it was against his interest that it should ever be con- 
summated. It was felt in Paris that the retention of 
the royal children in captivity was no longer possible. 
After the mysterious death of Dr. Desault, it is 
claimed, the dauphin was secretly conveyed from the 



44 AViio Was He ? 

Temple by one Bellanger, an artist and a royalist, who 
is known to have visited the child and gained his half- 
idiotic confidence ; another boy, far gone in scrofula 
and nigh unto death, was smuggled into the prison 
in his stead and palmed off by Lasne and Gomin on 
Drs. Pelletan and Dumangin, who had never seen the 
real prince. (This chimes well with the sudden and 
mysterious death of Dr. Desault. Had he been permit- 
ted to visit the changeling he would have at once 
detected and exposed the cheat. This, it is asserted, 
was provocation enough to those interested to war- 
rant Desault's " removal," and on this rests the belief 
that he was poisoned.) That the pseudo prince it 
was who died and w T as buried, while Charles Louis 
w T as carried first to the Netherlands, and then out of 
Europe. 

The General State-Advocate, some years later, in 
the progress of one of the trials of the claim of a 
certain personage to be the lost prince, said : " In 
regard to the flight of the dauphin from the Temple, 
the investigations w r hich I have made have brought 
me to the conclusion that it is incontestable." This 
is the testimony of a lawyer, who was familiar with 
documentary evidence and accustomed to deciding 
upon its value. • 



The Lost Heir of the Bourbons. 45 

Of course the reputed death of the dauphin in the 
Temple precluded his delivery to the Yendean army. 
That the prince really escaped is indicated by another 
circumstance. The Parisian police records show that 
an order, dated June 8, 1795, was sent out notifying 
officials throughout the country to arrest any travel- 
ers bearing with them a child of eight or nine years, 
as there had been an escape of royalists from the 
Temple. 

The findings of the post-mortem examination and 
the description therein of the malady and symptoms 
of the patient do not, and cannot be made to, corre- 
spond with the known condition of the dauphin when 
Laurent and Desault left him. 

Further: After the restoration, when the bodies of 
Louis XVI. , Marie Antoinette, and the Princess de 
Lamballe were disinterred and " identified " from 
among thousands of other victims of the Revolution, 
and from under cartloads of quicklime, and re-in- 
terred with regal pageant and religious pomp in the 
Church of St. Denis, no effort was made to recover 
the body of the dauphin. Though orders were issued 
to that end, and the place of sepulture was well 
known, the recovery and removal of his remains 
never took place, and the bones of Louis XVII. were 



46 Who Was He? 

allowed to remain alone and unmarked by sculptured 
stone or glowing epitaph. This marked omission re- 
vived all the former doubts concerning the death of 
the prince, which had slumbered during the Napole- 
onic regime, and the long exile of the Bourbons. 

Again: The physician, Pelletan, at. the autopsy, 
removed the heart of, as he believed, the dauphin, 
and preserved it. At the restoration of the Bourbon 
dynasty, twenty years later, he offered it to Louis 
XVIII., but though an order was issued that the 
relic should be deposited in St. Denis, the matter 
rested there, and both the king and the Duchess 
d'Angoulenie showed the utmost indifference to the 
existence of so precious a memento of' their departed 
kinsman. Do not these circumstances indicate that 
the royal family of France knew that Louis XYI. 
was not really dead, " and therefore dared not risk 
the mockery of searching for a corpse that had never 
been buried, of consecrating a relic which they knew, 
though honestly preserved, had throbbed in no bosom 
of their race ? " 

There is a mass of testimony, direct and indirect, 
too voluminous for insertion here, tending to establish 
the fact of substitution, and also that Louis XVII. 
did not die in the tower as testitied by Lasne and 



The Lost Heir of the Bourboxs. 47 

Gomin. These men were the only witnesses of his 
death ; they alone were with him from June 1 to 
June 8, 1795. But their testimony has been proved 
to be false in many minor particulars, why not as to 
the main fact, since they were interested parties ? It 
is possible, but not probable, that they spoke the truth 
on this occasion. 

Many persons in Europe, and particularly in 
France, believed then and still believe that the un- 
fortunate son of Louis XVI. and of Marie Antoinette 
did not die in the Temple, and that the body interred 
as his was that of another child. For many years 
succeeding the restoration of the Bourbons this feel- 
ing was intensified and kept alive by the comparative 
freshness of the events in the public memory and by 
the appearance of a number of pretenders who, with 
greater or less plausibility, claimed to be the orphan 
of the Temple. 

There have been several of these pseudo Louis Seven- 
teenths. There died in London so recently as the 
year 1880 an insane person named Augustus Meves, 
who, during his prime, claimed to be the dauphin, 
and'who found many persons to accept his story as 
true. Meves was said to have escaped from the Tem- 
ple and sought refuge in England. In 1874 a man, 



48 Who Was He? 

calling himself Auguste de Bourbon, asserted that he 
was the son of Meves, and the lost heir of the 
Bourbons. 

But one of the most persistent and plausible, and 
perhaps the most famous, of these impostors — for that 
he was such there can be but little doubt — was 
Charles William Naundorff. 

In 1833 a stranger arrived in Paris who claimed to 
be the son of Louis XYI. He assumed the name of 
Louis Charles, Duke of Normandy, introduced him- 
self into Legitimist circles, and very soon gained a 
number of ardent and very respectable adherents. 
Among these was Madame de Bambaud, who had 
been nurse to the dauphin from his birth till his 
confinement in the Temple; M. Marco de St. Hilaire, 
formerly gentleman-usher to Louis XYI. ; and M. 
Morel de St. Didier. Of the perfect sincerity and 
honorable conviction of these persons there can be 
no question. Madame de Bambaud professed to 
identify him by a crescent shaped vaccination mark, 
which all agreed in stating that the dauphin bore. 

So far as could be ascertained, NaundorfFs history 
began with his arrival in Prussia in 1810, when he 
followed the trade of watch-maker. He was married 
in 1818 at Spandau, but was then unable to produce 



The Lost Heir of the Bourbons. 49 

any certificate of birth. From 1820-28 he led a check- 
ered existence. He was imprisoned for some petty of- 
fense, and on his trial declared himself to be a prince, 
and in 1828 was pardoned, and went to Silesia. u In 
1832 he obtained a passport to France, and passing 
through Bavaria and Switzerland, arrived in Paris, 
declared himself to be the Duke of Normandy, and 
affirmed that the documentary proofs of his identity 
were in the hands of the Prussian cabinet." 

He asserted that his memory extended as far back 
as the memorable journey from Versailles to Paris 
when he was four years old. " From that time on 
he professed the most minute knowledge of persons, 
places, names, dresses, the situation of furniture, the 
succession of events, and every thing, public and pri- 
vate, that happened to the dauphin." He also showed 
an evident familiarity with the purlieus of the Tem- 
ple. His account of his escape was to the effect that 
some months before the reported death of the prince 
he was removed to a garret in the roof of the Tower, 
and there concealed, another child being substituted 
in his place ; that his destination was the "Vendean 
army, but on the way thither, in company with a 
lady and gentleman and a little girl, he fell ill, and 

was carried to a chateau, where he was visited by 
4 



50 Who Was He? 

General Charette and his friends, lie was hurried 
from one place to another on the Continent ; was im- 
prisoned for some years at Strasburg; but was finally 
liberated in 1S09 through the secret intercession of 
the Empress Josephine. In 1810 he reached Berlin, 
followed his trade of watchmaker (though he could 
not tell certainly where he had learned it), and as- 
sumed from compulsion, as he said, the name of 
Charles William Naundorff. From 1812 to 1832 he 
wrote innumerable letters " to the Duchess d'Angou- 
leme, to Prince Ilartenburg, to Louis XVIIL, and 
other eminent persons, but without obtaining any 
response." He claimed to possess valuable papers, 
which had been sewn into the lining of his coat by 
Marie Antoinette. 

He sought, without success, an interview with the 
Duchess d'Angouleme, whom he addressed as ' ; sis- 
ter," and was denied a hearing before the French 
tribunals. The duchess stipulated that before she 
could grant an audience the claimant must send cer- 
tain information which, if he really were the dauphin, 
he must possess. Xaundorff did not respond to this 
demand, and the duchess utterly repudiated his claim. 
Her conduct is inexplicable " except on the score of 
her knowledge of some secret which undercut the 



The Lost Heir of the Bocrboxs. . 51 

claims of Naundorff, the nature of which would not 
permit her to publicly state her grounds of action." 
She also insisted that JNaundorff should send her the 
minutest details of his escape from the Temple, which 
argues that she was aware her brother did escape, 
else how could she subject the claimant's statements, 
however false, to any test ? 

Though Naundorff had the entree into the most 
exclusive Legitimist circles, and kept a handsome 
establishment in Paris, with horses and carriages and 
liveried servants, supported by the contributions of 
his adherents, skeptics, nevertheless, were abundant 
enough among the royalist folk of the Faubourg St. 
Germain, particularly as Naundorff was ignorant of 
the dauphin's mother tongue. One, interrogating 
him, observed, " You — supposing you to be the dau- 
phin — were an extremely clever child, and spoke 
French with ease ; how happens it that you have 
completely forgotten your own language ? " The 
pretender replied that " thirty -seven years of absence 
from France was surely enough to account for this 
circumstance ;" but the answer was not considered 
satisfactory. About the year 1838 he w T as expelled 
from France, the police suspecting that he was the 
object of certain intrigues, and, going to England, he 



52 • Who Was He? 

established himself at Camberwell and at Chelsea as a 
manufacturer of fireworks and a new patent explosive 
shell. Failing in these pursuits he went to Holland, 
and died at Delft in August, 1S44, in great poverty. 
The appeal of the widow Naundorff and her chil- 
dren was finally heard in February, 1874, when the 
court, after due investigation, decided that the tale 
told by the elder Naundorff of his escape from 
prison by means of a double substitution was " most 
fantastic;" that Naundorff had himself fabricated the 
documents on which his claims and those of his de- 
scendants were based, and that the wdiole case con- 
sisted of " singular allegations, vain rumors, and fu- 
tile presumptions." The judgment went on to say 
that Naundorff exhibited no qualifications but those 
of an audacious adventurer, a man without talent, 
who undertook to play a part rendered the more easy 
by the mystery of his birth and origin. It was added 
that the cunning and skill which he had exhibited 
were not more remarkable than those of other im- 
postors, his predecessors in the same character, the 
court further observing that "a large following of 
credulous believers has never been wanting for 
pseudo dauphins in France." 

There can be but little doubt that Naundorff was 



The Lost Heir of the Bourbons. 53 

an impostor, who had in some manner become pos- 
sessed of facts relating to the imprisonment, escape, 
and subsequent career of the dauphin, together with 
certain documentary evidence, which he proceeded to 
digest and commit to memory until he became an 
adept in his tale. In 1883 the son of this pretender, 
who styled himself "Prince Charles Edward de Bour- 
bon," died at Breda, in Holland, in such distressed 
circumstances that his body was placed in a pauper's 
coffin and buried at the expense of a charitable 
society. 

The Baron de Richemont also posed for some years 
as the dauphin, and, as was the case with Naundorff, 
won many noble names to the support of his preten- 
sions. " Of all the claimants to the honors and emolu- 
ments of the Bourbons," says a recent writer, * " the 
Baron de Richemont presents the greatest amount of 
probabilities and plausibilities. Throughout his life 
he persistently asked the question in courts of law 
and other places, ' If I am not Louis XVII., who am 
I?' and we believe the question was never satisfac- 
torily answered. His life was a long succession of 
strange adventures, which, although lying before us, 
and abounding in incident and entertainment, are too 

* In the Leisure Hour, 1885. 



54 Who Was He? 

lengthy for these pages. Each period of his life 
seems to be distinctly traceable, whether in Africa or 
America, or in Austrian prisons, to which the schemes 
of French governments consigned him. In 1S30 he 
sent a protest to all the governments in Europe 
against the ascension of Louis Philippe to the 
throne, and it is very singular that the Duchess of 
Orleans, the mother of Louis Philippe, steadily sup- 
ported his claims ; and it was probably owing to her 
influence that he was permitted to continue for some 
time unmolested in Paris. But when the government 
was apparently firmly established, and it was believed, 
and even came to be generally known, that he held 
in his hand sufficient evidence of his identity, it was 
determined to silence him. He was arrested on a 
charge of conspiring against the safety of the State. 
His trial continued during a period of fifteen months. 
The very prosecutors were compelled almost to ac- 
knowledge his identity with the dauphin, and during 
this long course of investigation no answer was given 
to his question, i If I am not Louis XVIL, who am 
I?' Even the language of the president of the 
court to the jury, toward the close of the trial, was 
remarkable, and seems to show the drift of his own 
thought. * Gentlemen, who is the accused now 



The Lost Heir of the Bourbons. 55 

standing before you ? What is his true name, his 
origin, his family ? What are his antecedents % 
What is his whole life ? Is he a tool of the enemies 
■of France, who strive to stir up civil war throughout 
our land % Or is he, rather, only an unfortunate man 
who, as by a miracle, escaped from the horrors of a 
bloody revolution ? who, outlawed and excommuni- 
cated from his very birth, finds no name and no 
refuge where he can lay his head !' Such was the 
language of a president of a court of justice concern- 
ing an accused man. The jury could not agree upon 
his identity, and only found him guilty of conspiracy 
against the safety of the State. The difficulty was, 
beneath what name to condemn him ; but lie was 
condemned to twelve years' imprisonment. He es- 
caped, however, and found his way to Switzerland. " 

Much was hoped for his cause at the social up- 
heaval of the Revolution of 1848, but, as is known, 
Napoleon the Little was the only one to permanently 
profit thereby, and Richemont again sank into ob- 
scurity. But the drama was not yet played out. 
"It was in the year 1853," says the writer last 
quoted, " that a stir of unusual curiosity was awak- 
ened in Yillefranche, near Lyons. The countess of 
one of the oldest and richest Legitimist families had 



56 Who Was He? 

sent her carriage to await the arrival of a train, her- 
self following on foot, although seventy years of age, 
leaning on the arm of her son, the Count Maurice. 
The train arrived, the count advanced, uncovered, 
hat in hand, and received a vigorous but vener- 
able old man, in simple attire. Still uncovered, the 
count conducted him to the carriage ; the countess, it 
is said, receiving him also with those distinguished 
marks of the politeness of the ancient regime which 
are now rarely affected anywhere but* on the stage. 
No wonder that the personality of the mysterious 
stranger excited curiosity. Startling, indeed, when 
that very night in the old castle the mysterious per- 
son died of apoplexy. The funeral followed ; but 
before that the train which arrived from Paris 
brought about twenty men, simply attired, but among 
whom many persons declared they recognized dukes 
and princes, the known attaches of the great and true 
Legitimist family of France. The funeral over — and 
it was, naturally enough, a large one — all these re- 
turned b} T the next train to Paris. 

".The mystery seemed to be solved when, eight 
days after, a gravestone arrived from Paris, upon 
which, when placed over the remains, the astonished 
spectators read : ' Here rests Louis Charles of France. 



The Lost Heir of the Bourbons. 57 

Born in Versailles, March 27, 17S5 ; died at Castle 
Vreux Renard, August 10, 1853.' Now the people 
were enlightened as to the personality of the old gen- 
tleman who was received with such distinguished 
honors, and who had been for so brief a time the 
guest in the old castle ; and at the same time the 
Paris newspapers announced the death of the Baron 
de Richemont, whose life had been one long succes- 
sion of persecutions in defiance of his claims to be 
regarded as the legitimate successor to the scepter of 
France. Naturally enough, however, the gravestone 
was not allowed to retain its place long. On No- 
vember 12 arrived the Prefect of the Department, 
the Judge of Inquiry, and a band of military officers. 
These summoned the mayor, and they all proceeded 
to the church-yard, attended by a great crowd, and 
the tombstone was demolished. But the greatest 
mystery remained behind. As the prefect was about 
to leave the church-yard a telegraphic dispatch from 
Paris was handed to him. He was surprised, start- 
led, consulted with his fellow-officers, then called for 
the grave-diggers, and commanded that the grave 
should be immediately opened. The expressions on 
the faces were curious — incredulity, contempt, aston- 
ishment — but the work was done. The grave diners 



5S Who Was He? 

came to the coffin. What next? The prefect com- 
manded them to lift the cover. The order was exe- 
cuted, but this only showed a second coffin of lead. 
This was also opened. A cry of astonishment burst 
from the crowd ; the coffin was empty ! " 

Xo elucidation entirely satisfactory has ever been 
ottered concerning this most mysterious transaction. 

To America, however, belongs the honor of produc- 
ing a claimant to the throne of the Bourbons whose 
pretensions were as weighty and as strongly substan- 
tiated as those of either of his predecessors. This 
was the Rev. Eleazar Williams, a missionary among 
the Indians of the State of New York, and a reputa- 
ble and cultured clergyman of the Protestant Episco- 
pal Church. A little more than thirty years ago an 
active dispute enlivened our papers and periodicals 
respecting his claim, and the Rev. J. H. Hanson 
published a volume of some five hundred pages, 
bringing Mr. Williams prominently before the pub- 
lic and championing his "rights." At the same time 
a translation of the voluminous work of M. de Beau- 
chesne was issued by the Harpers, and became the 
adverse authority. 

There arrived in Albany, New York, direct from 
France, in the year 1795 a French family consisting 



The Lost Heir of the Bourbons. 59 

of a lady, a gentleman, and two children, a boy and a 
girl. They were known by the name of De Jardin 
or De Jourdan, and although the man and woman 
bore the same name, they seemed not to occupy the 
conjugal relation. They were, like many of the 
French emigres then crowding to America, at first 
plentifully supplied with money ; but while Madame 
de Jardin and the children always appeared richly 
attired, her companion, Monsieur Jardin, dressed 
meanly, and apparently occupied the position of a 
courier. The little girl was named Louise, while the 
boy, about nine or ten years old, was addressed in- 
variably as Monsieur Louis. He was kept apart 
from company, and on the few occasions when he 
was permitted to be seen " did not appear to notice " 
those who surrounded him. 

Madame de Jardin averred that she had filled the 
post of maid of honor to Marie Antoinette, and in 
proof exhibited many articles of dress, jewelry, plate, 
etc., marked with the royal arms, and formerly be- 
longing to the king and queen of France. The chil- 
dren were thought by their limited circle of acquaint- 
ance to belong to the royal family of that nation. 
x\fter dwelling a short time in Albany the De Jar- 
dins sold their effects and quietly disappeared. The 



CO Who Was He? 

mystery attaching to the family was intensified for 
a time by their sudden departure, but the episode 
shortly faded from the recollection of the com- 
munity. 

There lived in Caughnawaga, in Canada, on the 
south shore of the St. Lawrence, about this time, a 
half-breed Indian, Thomas Williams, with his numer- 
ous family. This man was remotely descended from 
the Rev. John Williams, a white resident of Deer- 
field, Mass., who was captured in 1704 at the time of 
the combined attacks of the French and Indians on 
that town. Thomas Williams had married an Indian 
girl in 1779, and the couple had in all eleven chil- 
dren, wdiose names were duly recorded in the records 
of the little Catholic Church at Caughnawaga. 

Williams, wdiose " residence " may be said to have 
been at the latter place, visited Lake George annu- 
ally on a fishing and hunting expedition, accompanied 
by his family and many other Indians. In the fall 
of 1795 two Frenchmen, "one of them having the 
appearance of a priest," came to Ticonderoga, on the 
shore of Lake George, bringing a " weak and sickly 
boy, in a state of mental imbecility, whom they left 
among the Indians." He was born in France, said 
his conductors, and he was adopted into the family 



The Lost Heir of the Bourbons. 61 

of John Williams, and named Eleazar. Though, as 
we have seen, the name of Williams's eleven children 
were all duly registered in the baptismal roll at 
Caughnawaga, yet the name of the adopted child, 
Eleazar, does not appear therein, nor would his puta- 
tive mother ever admit that he was her son, although 
she as studiously refrained from declaring that he 
was not. 

For some years after the above event the stranger 
boy remained in delicate health, both physically and 
mentally. But a rugged life in the open air and the 
administration of large quantities of Indian herb de- 
coctions wrought wonders, and " though still unsound 
in mind, he took delight in playing with the other 
bo} T s," and became proficient in their rude sports. 
During one of these periodic sojourns at Lake 
George the youngsters were all bathing in the lake, 
and one after the other diving from a rock near the 
shore. Eleazar, in one of his plunges, struck his 
head against a stone at the bottom, and rose to the 
surface bleeding and insensible from a gash in the 
temple. He was put to bed, and his wounds attended 
to ; when he regained consciousness his idiocy had 
fled forever. From that time all distinct recollection 
— all intellectual perception — began. 



62 Who Was He \ 

On a later occasion two richly dressed French gen- 
tlemen visited the Indian encampment, and inquired 
for the adopted boy. One of these was much af- 
fected, shed tears, kissed Eleazar, and repeatedly ex- 
claimed, " Pauvre gargon!" He remained at the 
camp two days, and at parting embraced the boy, and 
presented him with a piece of gold. 

Thomas Williams received at stated periods remit- 
tances of money from Europe, ostensibly for the care 
of Eleazar. A few days after the visit just recorded 
Eleazar and one of his reputed brothers, named John, 
were sent to Long Meadow, Mass., to be educated, 
and were placed under the care of a Mr. Nathaniel 
Ely. Eleazar was now about fifteen. 

As might have been anticipated, the progress of 
John in his studies was abnormally slow. On the 
other hand, Eleazar made rapid strides, and made 
light of the difficulties of acquiring an English edu- 
cation. The marked difference in the personal ap- 
pearance of the two lads was such as to call forth 
expressions of astonishment whenever they were seen 
together. John looked, as he was, a nearly full- 
blooded Indian ; in Eleazar's face and form no traces 
of aboriginal descent could be discerned. 

In course of time the education of Eleazar Will- 



The Lost Heir of the Bourbons. 63 

iams was completed, and he made known his desire 
to become a missionary to the Indians. In the War 
of 1812, and later, he figured as the friend of the red 
man, and until 1822 he labored most effectually as a 
lay missionary among that people. In the spring of 
1826 he was ordained a priest by Bishop Hobart, of 
the Protestant Episcopal communion, and appointed 
to Green Bay, Wis., there to spend his life in mis- 
sionary labor among the rude people he loved. On 
March 3, 1823, he married at Green Bay a young 
lady of French and Indian extraction, named Magde- 
line Jourdan, who possessed in her own right several 
thousand acres of the finest land on the borders of 
the Fox River. In the treaty disputes between the 
tribes of the Six Nations and the United States re- 
specting the land formerly held by the Indians, Mr. 
Williams bravely championed the rights of the red 
man, and in so doing achieved an almost national 
reputation. 

In journeying to and fro in the then wild West, 
preaching, baptizing, and marrying, and in every 
way seeking to elevate and educate his half-savage 
people, passed the next quarter century of the life of 
this heroic missionary. 

In the autumn of 1851 there appeared a brief arti- 



64 Who Was He? 

cle in the columns of a New York journal recount- 
ing the " strange eventful history " of this Indian 
missionary, and affirming that there were strong rea- 
sons for supposing him to be the son of Louis XVI., 
and that one of the circumstances favoring such a 
belief was his strong personal resemblance to the 
Bourbon family. This elicited statements of various 
half-forgotten events, and soon the journals of the 
Western continent teemed with items about the un- 
fortunate dauphin, coupling his name with that of 
the Rev. Eleazar Williams. 

The Rev. J. H. Hanson, in common with many 
others, read the articles in question with some inter- 
est, but thought the conjectures nothing more than 
mere newspaper gossip. A short time thereafter he 
chanced to meet Mr. Williams in the cars while jour- 
neying between Ogdensburg and New York. A 
number of hours passed in his company afforded Mr. 
Hanson an opportunity to inquire if Mr. Williams 
was aware of the rumors afloat affecting his origin. 

He replied that he was ; that he remembered noth- 
ing about his infancy ; that until the age of fourteen 
or fifteen years his mind was a blank, and that prior 
to his fall in the lake he was substantially an idiot. 
His mental awakening after that accident was the 



The Lost Heir of the Bourbons. 65 

first lie knew of life. Being asked how he came to 
entertain tliis belief concerning his high birth and 
origin, he replied : 

" I was under the impression that I was at least 
partly of Indian extraction until the time that the 
Prince de Joinville (son of Louis Philippe) came to 
this country." 

This visit occurred in 1841. Mr. Williams then 
and on subsequent occasions gave Mr. Hanson the 
following particulars of what transpired between 
himself and the prince : 

" One of the first questions he asked on his arrival 
in New York was whether there w r as not a person 
known as Eleazar Williams among the Indians of the 
northern part of the State." 

He was informed that there was, and through a 
third party the prince signified that he would be 
happy to have an interview with Mr. Williams. In 
October, 1841, it " chanced " that the Prince de Join- 
ville and the humble missionary were fellow-passen- 
gers on a steamboat between Mackinac and Green 
Bay. The prince requested an introduction, and 
they became acquainted. The son of Louis Philippe 
was visibly affected at the meeting, and the better 

part of two days was spent in conversation, in the 
5 



M Who Was He? 

course of which the prince referred frequently to the 
events of the French Kevolution and to the troubles 
and misfortunes of the royal family at that time. 

When the party arrived at Green Bay the 
prince desired that Mr. Williams would visit him at 
his hotel, saying he had matters of great moment to 
communicate. In the evening Mr. Williams made 
the promised call, and, after further conversation, was 
informed by the prince that he was none other than 
Louis XVII. ! In the end he was asked to sign a 
parchment renouncing all claim on the part of him- 
self and his heirs to the throne of France, in return 
for which a munificent pecuniary settlement was 
promised, as well as the restitution of the private 
estates belonging to Louis XVI., which were confis- 
cated during the Revolution. 

The effect of this sudden disclosure Mr. Williams 
described as crushing. In the end, however, he re- 
fused to sign, returning to the prince the answer 
which the Count de Provence gave under similar 
circumstances to the emissary of Napoleon : 

" Though I am in poverty and exile, I will not 
sacrifice my honor ! " 

Upon this refusal the Prince de Joinville showed 
signs of anger, but finally they parted friends. 



The Lost Heir of the Bourbons. G7 

This was the substance of the statement made to 
Mr. Hanson by Mr. Williams. It should be stated 
here that the Prince de Joinville, on the publication 
of the article, " Have we a Dauphin Among Us ?" by 
Mr. Hanson in Putnarrfs Magazine, repudiated all 
those portions of the interview tending to establish 
the identity of Mr. Williams with Louis XVII. 

In sketching the life and history of this remarkable 
man, we have of necessity omitted many minor details 
which, taken collectively, tend to amazingly strengthen 
his case. Grouped and arranged, as they were by Mr. 
Hanson, with much ability and all the zeal of a spe- 
cial pleader, they form a well-connected chain of cir- 
cumstantial evidence. It was, to say the least, a re- 
markable coincidence that a half-witted boy, in poor 
health, of French lineage, and of the same age as the 
dauphin, should, in the year of the reported escape 
from the Temple, appear in America, the country of 
all best fitted for concealment, and there be buried 
alive among a tribe of half-savage Indians, his re- 
puted father receiving from France remittances on 
account of his maintenance. 

Allusion has been made to the close physical and 
facial resemblance of Mr. Williams to the Bourbon 
family. He possessed the Austrian lip, and his 



OS Who Was He? 

whole personal presence favored the idea that he 
came of kingly stock. Persons familiar with the 
features of Louis XVIII., on being shown a portrait 
of Mr. W 7 illiams, insisted that it was the likeness of 
the king. To the day of his death Mr. Williams was 
afflicted with scrofula at the knee-joints, and also 
bore two scars on his face, corresponding with two 
wounds made by the brutal Simon in chastising the 
little dauphin ; neither was the crescent-shaped vac- 
cination mark on the arm wanting. Inoculation was 
not known or practiced among the Indians until 
many years after the arrival among them of the boy 
whom they called Eleazar. 

Poor, well-nigh friendless, and in his declining 
years but little known, Mr. Williams took no steps to 
push his remarkable claim. He died in 1858. That 
he honestly believed himself to be the rightful son of 
Louis XYI. there is as little reason to doubt as that 
his well-known probity would not have permitted 
him to lend himself knowingly to an imposture. 
Whether or no the salient details of the interview" with 
the Prince de Joinville were the figment of a disor- 
dered brain will never, in all probability, be known. 
The story of Eleazar Williams is only paralleled in 
its romantic details by that of the Due de Richemont. 



The Lost Heir of the Bourbons. 69 

Of course, there were not two real dauphins, and an 
acceptance of the claims of either of necessity pre- 
cludes all consideration of those of his rival. 

The summing up of this remarkable case in the 
Knickerbocker Review, before referred to as substan- 
tially reproduced in the columns of The Evening 
Post, leaves so little to be said that we quote it here 
in its entirety : 

" Two witnesses, according to M. Beauchesne, tes- 
tify positively as to the death of the prince, namely : 
Lasne and Gomin. They tell us that they were his 
attendants, the one from March 31, 1793, the other 
from November 8, 1794, to the day of his death. 
They further minutely describe the condition of the 
prince from June 5 to June 8 (there is a blank in 
Beauchesne's account from the first to the fifth), and 
then his last moments, and the hour and the minute 
when he died. In the eloquent language of his biog- 
rapher, ' Lasne put his hand upon the heart of the 
child. The heart of Louis XVII. had ceased to beat. 
It was two hours and a quarter after midday.' As 
these persons were both in the Temple before May 
29, 1795, it is evident that they both knew the real 
prince. As they were constantly and solely in at- 
tendance, it is evident that no exchange could have 



70 Who Was He? 

been brought about without their knowledge. As 
they testify explicitly and positively that no ex- 
change did take place, and that Louis XVII. died on 
June 8, ill the Temple, there is no ground for mis- 
take. We must therefore conclude either that Louis 
XVII. died as they describe, or that their statements 
are willfully false. What, then, are the facts, in the 
nature of circumstantial evidence, which tend to dis- 
credit this positive testimony and throw a doubt upon 
the alleged death of Louis XVII.? 

" The eminent physician Desault attended the 
prince up to May 29, 1775. He had known him and 
been his medical attendant before his imprisonment. 
His character is beyond suspicion, and his evidence 
beyond doubt. Both parties agree that his testimony 
is to be taken as absolute truth. Desault found the 
prince worn and emaciated, showing little intelli- 
gence, and preserving a continued silence. Although 
lie made every effort to arouse his faculties and win 
liis affection, the child gave no stronger sign of men- 
tal power than feebly taking hold of his coat as he 
was about to leave the room. On the night of May 
20, Desault died. Subsequently to this the child in 
the Temple seems to have talked frequently, as is 
shown by at least Lasne, Gomin, Bellanger, and the 



The Lost Heik of the Bourbons. 71 

physicians Pelletan and Dumangin. Nor had his dis- 
ease been subject to sudden changes, as the account 
of the first visit of Laurent, nearly a year before his 
death, sufficiently shows. ' The noise around him,' 
says Laurent, ' made him tremble, bat he did not 
stir. He answered no question. He was conscious 
of nothing. He breathed. His open eyes had no 
expression. Their color had changed. He had the 
look, not of a fool, but of an idiot.' In addition to 
this, the evidence of the physicians shows that the 
child dissected by them had died with unimpaired 
intellect. ' The brain and its dependencies,' says the 
jproces-verbal, ' were in their most perfect integrity.' 
The evidence incontrovertibly shows that on or about 
the first of June a sudden change took place, and con- 
tinued till his death. 

" Next in the chain of circumstantial evidence is 
the alleged change in the physical condition of the 
prince. It may be summed up in two sentences : 
First, Desault testifies that the prince had ' the germ 
of scrofulous affection,' and that the malady had 
* scarcely imprinted its seal on his constitution, nor 
manifested itself with any violent symptoms — neither 
vast ulcers nor rebellious ophthalmias nor chronic 
swellings of the joints.' Secondly, the surgeons 



72 Who Was He ? 

who, ten days after the last visit of Desault, made the 
post-mortem examination, testify that all the appear- 
ances were 'evidently the effects of a scrofulous disease 
of long standing, and to which the death of the child 
should be attributed.' In support of these opinions 
respectively, we find, first, that Desault applied gen- 
tle remedies up to May 29, recommended air and ex- 
ercise, and, according to the Duchesse d'Angouleme, 
' undertook to cure ' the prince. Secondly, that Pel- 
letan, on June 5, found the child so low that he in- 
stantly called in a consulting physician, M. Dumangin, 
chief physician of the Hospital of the Unity. The 
eminence of all these physicians precludes a doubt as 
to professional errors or intentional misrepresenta- 
tions. We have the undoubted proof that a very 
great change had taken place in a period of seven 
days, which is not noticed, explained, or mentioned 
by the attendants, Lasne and Gomin. 

" Next as to the circumstances attendant on the 
death or disappearance of the dauphin : 1. The gov- 
ernment separated the prince from the rest of the 
family. 2. They appointed a keeper, a friend of 
Marat, known from his hatred of the royal race. 
3. This man was obliged to become a prisoner in 
the Temple ; he was not even allowed to go to his 



The Lost Heir of the Bourbons. 73 

own home except when guarded by a file of sol- 
diers. 4. The government set apart as large a sum 
for the expenses of keeping and guarding the child 
as for all the other members of the family. 

5. A system of espionage was established, intricate, 
troublesome, and expensive. Paris was divided into 
forty districts ; from each district one commissioner 
was elected. A commissioner visited the Temple 
each day, and each commissioner visited it but once. 
With his single visit his term of office ended. 

6. Toward the end of the supposed existence of the 
prince the three most eminent physicians in France 
were appointed his attendants. Whatever was the 
motive, an intent to carefully preserve the life of the 
dauphin is apparent. 

" It is next to be noted that the Comte de Pro- 
vence, the uncle of the prince and his heir, endeav- 
ored (whatever his motive may have been) to obtain 
possession of his nephew. It is an undoubted fact 
that he at that time had emissaries in Paris, foremost 
among whom was the Comte de Fenouil. Now, of 
the three persons who were in attendance on the 
prince, Gomin was a royalist, Lasne a moderate re- 
publican, afterward employed by the Comte de Pro- 
vence, while Bellanger had been his ornamental 



74 Who Was He? 

painter. It has been alleged that these persons ob- 
tained an entrance to the prison of the dauphin 
through the intrigues of the Comte de Fenouil ; and 
all this raises a presumption of the intent on the part 
of the Comte de Provence to procure the escape of 
the dauphin, and on the part of the government to 
connive at it. 

" But at this time a very startling event occurred 
in this drama. Desault, within a few hours of his 
last visit to the prince, died. It is again to be re- 
marked that he was personally acquainted with the 
prince, was a physician of eminent reputation, and a 
man of stainless integrity. M. Beauchesne asserts 
that he died of ataxic fever ; Mr. Hanson, that he 
was poisoned by the government. ■ Aside from the 
suddenness and the singularity of his death at this 
particular time there is no evidence indicating that 
it was unnatural, unless we except statements said to 
have been made several years ago by M. Abeille, 
the pupil of Desault. But there is one circum- 
stance to be noted, which is that the death of 
Desault was falsified in the records of the govern- 
ment. Whatever may have been the motive, it was 
registered (as is shown by Beauchesne) four days 
later than it actually occurred. During these four 



The Lost Heir of the Bourbons. 75 

days no physician attended the prince, and of them 
the account of Beauchesne is silent. 

" The conduct of the royal family, it is alleged, 
was equivocal, suspicious, and irreconcilable with a 
belief in the death of the dauphin. Although the 
highest marks of respect were paid to the memory 
of Louis XVI., Marie Antoinette, and the Due 
d'Enghien, none w T ere given to the last, though youth- 
ful, king. In the graves of the two former quick- 
lime had been emptied, and hundreds of victims bur- 
ied over them and around them to obliterate the spot. 
The grave of the dauphin could have been easily dis- 
covered, and the surgeons' examination of the skull 
afforded certain proof to identify the remains ; yet 
while the supposed dust of Louis XVI. and Marie 
Antoinette was exhumed, to be reburied with stately 
pomp and studied mourning, the bones of Louis 
XVII., in an obscure cemetery, unmarked by a single 
memorial, still rest like those of a common pauper. 

" Again, Pelletan, the physician, carried from the 
post-mortem examination the heart of the child who 
died in the Temple, and he offered it to the king as 
the heart of the dauphin. An inquiry was instituted, 
in which Lasne testified that he was present at the 
examination, and nothing was carried away. The 



76 Who Was He \ 

evidence, although contradictory, can be reconciled ; 
for the statement of Lasne amounts to nothing more 
than that he observed closely and did not see any 
thing taken. Pelletan was a physician of the highest 
standing, and entitled to belief, yet Louis XVIII. 
adopted the statement of Lasne, and rejected the 
relic. 

" More interesting, if not more clear, are the ad- 
missions to be derived from the conduct of the 
Duchess d'Angouleme. She was a woman of daunt- 
less energy, unwavering resolution, and possessed of 
self-command beyond the ordinary measure of her 
sex or race. She was dignified, stern, conscientious, 
believing fully in the religion which she professed, 
and devoted to the system of which her family was 
the exponent. So greatly, indeed, did she possess 
these qualities, that Bonaparte is reported to have 
said of her that she was the only man in her family. 
Her position was as peculiar as her character. She 
was the daughter of the murdered king, the niece of 
the reigning one, the sister of the rightful prince, 
and the wife of the heir-apparent. Like Louis 
XVIIL, she erected no monument, and allowed the 
heart produced by Pelletan to be retained by his 
family. We cannot discover a single act indicating 



The Lost Heir of the Bourbons. 77 

the sisterly regard which would naturally be shown 
toward the remains of a brother. Yet to the other 
members of her family who had been the victims of 
the Revolution no testimonials that an affection al- 
most fanatical could prompt were unpaid. For her 
cousin, the Due d'Enghien, once a week for months 
she had masses performed, and repaired to her chapel 
to pray for his soul. It is truly said, in reply to 
this, that the like offices were unnecessary, according 
to the tenets of the Catholic faith, for the soul of a 
child. But, while this is true, it nevertheless shows 
a carelessness in regard to her brother strangely at 
variance with the fervor of the devotion which she 
rendered to what she deemed the sacred victims of an 
unholy rebellion. 

" To the duchess, Naundorff preferred his claim. 
Repeated were his applications for a personal inter- 
view, and repeated her refusals. To every request 
she returned, not a decided negative, but a condition 
that he should send her the documentary evidence 
he pretended to possess. At one time she appears to 
have deemed a personal interview with the King of 
Prussia necessary to resolve her doubts. Whenever 
this subject was brought to her notice, strong 
agitation is said to have shaken her entire frame. 



78 Who Was He? 

From her character and conduct two inferences 
may be drawn : first, that she would never have 
consented to have deprived her brother of .his rights, 
and that her agitation was due to the love she bore 
him and the horrors he had endured; secondly, that 
she did assent to the surrender of his rights from 
motives of state policy, but, in the unbending pride 
of her nature, scorned to render those testimonials of 
respect and love to the unknown dust of the supposi- 
titious prince which she would eagerly have given to 
a murdered- brother and the heir of her kingly race." 
From the foregoing resume it will be seen that the 
escape of the prince was, if not probable, at least 
quite possible, and that there were a hundred strange 
occurrences which it is almost impossible to reconcile 
with his death in the Temple. In the words with 
which the Rev. J. Hanson concludes the first part of 
his able work : " A great wrong has been done, and 
we can clearly trace the whole course of motives and 
events up to a certain point, and then there is an 
abrupt cessation, with only here and there an indica- 
tion of a dark secret to which the published annals of 
Europe afford no clue. Like one of those rivers 
which suddenly lose themselves in the earth, and roll 
their tide along in subterranean darkness, the fate of 



The Lost Heir of the Bourbons. 79 

Louis XYII. is hidden from the eyes of men, and 
every attempt hitherto made to unriddle the enigma 
of his destiny only deepens the mystery, and carries 
the mind into more inextricable labyrinths which, 
like the mazes of some primeval forest, afford no 
outlet." 

The drama opened on French soil, and amid the 
tumult and terror of the bloodiest revolution that 
ever reddened the page of history. Whether or no 
its closing scenes were enacted on the shores of " that 
new world which is the old " remains, and probably 
will remain, one of the enigmas of history. 



II. 
THE UNKNOWN OF THE BASTILE. 



THE 

UNKNOWN OF THE BASTILE. 




BTE of the most perplexing, and at the 
same time one of the most ro- 
mantic, of the enigmas of history 
is the mystery concerning the 
identity of the personage known 
in French State annals as I? Homme au 
Masque de Fer — u the Man of the Iron 
Mask." 

During his lifetime, and for a century after his 
decease, public curiosity was so whetted by the se- 
crecy which enveloped the famous prisoner and his 
movements, that, in the eagerness to discover the key 
to the riddle, innumerable papers were written and a 
variety of theories propounded — all plausible, a few 
probable, but most of them collapsing like a house of 
cards, when blown upon by the rude breath of persist- 
ent inquiry. 



S4 Who Was He? 

Of late years, though the mystery is scarcely 
nearer solution than before, the subject has not 
received much attention — not from lack of interest in 
the matter, but because of the apparent difficulty of 
arriving at any definite or satisfactory conclusion. 
Never were the lovers of the romance of history 
invited to a more alluring banquet. The hidden 
crimes of the Borgias and the nameless iniquities of 
the Inquisition were paralleled, if not surpassed, by 
the enormity of immuring a man of noble birth — in 
the prime of life, and against whom no heinous 
crime was charged — in a living tomb for a lifetime. 

" No certain clue," says Voltaire, writing in 1752, 
" has ever been obtained as to the history of the mys- 
terious stranger. The closest scrutiny has been baf- 
fled, the most diligent search foiled, in the attempt to 
fathom the most singular historical mystery that has 
ever presented itself." 

Briefly, the commonly received story of the Iron 
Mask runs as follows : In 1662, shortly after the 
death of Cardinal Mazarin in 1661, there was sent 
to the fortress of the Isle de Ste. Marguerite, in 
the Mediterranean, an unknown prisoner. He was 
young, in stature above the average height, and of a 
handsome, noble figure. On the journey thither he 



The Unknown of the Bastile. 85 

wore a mask of black velvet, strengthened by steel 
bands (popularly called an iron mask), the lower part 
of which was provided with a hinged attachment that 
permitted of his eating without ever removing the 
mask. His guards were told to kill him if he ever 
told who he was or removed his disguise. 

He remained at Ste. Marguerite and other prisons 
for twenty-nine years, all the time closely guarded, 
and was then removed to the Bastile in Paris. While 
at Ste. Marguerite it was said that lie scratched some 
words, with the tine of a fork, on a silver platter, and 
Hung it out of the window to a spot where he saw 
a fisherman's boat moored to the shore near by. 
The man picked up the plate and carried it to the 
governor of the castle, thinking it had fallen out of 
the window by an accident. The governor, after he 
had perused the writing, appeared much troubled, 
and asked the fisherman if he had also read it, and if 
he had shown it to any person. The man replied that 
he could not read, and when the officer had satisfied 
himself that this was true, he dismissed him, saying : 

" It is well for you that you do not know how to 
read ! " 

The physician who prescribed for the Mask during 
his detention at the Bastile said that, though he had 



80 Who Was He? 

long attended him, lie had never seen his face — only 
his tongue — and that he was admirably formed. 
The mysterious prisoner never complained of his 
condition, nor did he ever drop a chance word that 
might afford an insight into his identity. It was, 
however, clear to all who came in contact w r ith him, 
that he was a personage of rank and social impor- 
tance. " His rooms," we are told, " were handsomely 
furnished ; he was served with the greatest respect 
possible ; the governor of his prison himself waited 
upon him at meals, and never remained covered or 
seated in his presence without permission. The pris- 
oner's taste for fine linen and lace was gratified to the 
utmost, and many diversions were allowed with a 
view to making his rigorous confinement as light as 
possible, and he amused himself frequently with a 
guitar. To give some idea of the importance of the 
prisoner, it may be mentioned that the Marquis de 
Louvois, prime-minister to Louis XIV., visited him 
prior to his removal from Isle Ste. Marguerite, and 
at all the interviews he never once sat down." 

M. de Chamillart, French Minister of State, was 
one of the few who possessed a knowledge of the 
truth of the mystery. When he was dying, his son- 
in-law, the Marechal de la Feuillade, begged him on 



The Unknown of the Bastile. 87 

his knees to tell him who the Mask was. The dying 
statesman refused, saying it was a State secret he was 
sworn never to divulge. 

It should be said here, however, that there are 
numberless remarkable stories connected with the 
Mask which have no foundation in fact, being mere 
legendary appendages to the true story, affixed by 
popular rumor or belief. Voltaire, " who first gave 
the story a fixed place in history, delivered it as 
rumor had conveyed it to him — inaccurately, and 
with sundry embellishments well fitted to encourage 
still wilder surmises." Several of the incidents, as 
that of the silver platter, were subsequently proved to 
have had no connection with the Iron Mask. On 
this account, therefore, we may hesitate to accept as 
genuine many of the more ornate details. However, 
enough remains to render the episode not only a 
striking feature of the time in which it occurred, but 
also to provoke ths astonishment of posterity. To 
Voltaire's account are we indebted for the romantic 
aspect in which the case was early set before the 
world. 

In 1703 the Masque de Fer died suddenly in the 
Bastile. His funeral was conducted with the great- 
est secrecy, the body being interred at night in the 



88 Who Was He ? 

church-yard of St. Paul, with the facial lineaments 
hidden from mortal ken. After his death his effects 
were burned, and the walls of his chamber were 
scraped and freshly painted so as to completely oblit- 
erate all trace of any tell-tale inscriptions. Nearly two 
centuries have rolled away " since Death, the great 
liberator, freed the captive from his prison, and no 
voice has been found to declare either his name Or his 
generation. Suggestions there have been in plenty, 
but all shoot wide of the mark." 

The register of the Bastile contains the following 
entries : 

" Names and Qualities of the Prisoners. — An old 
prisoner from Pignerol, obliged always to wear a 
mask of black velvet, whose name and quality have 
never been known. 

"Date of Entry.— September 18, 1698, at three 
o'clock in the afternoon. 

" Reasons for Detention. — Never known. 

" Observations. — This is the famous Man of the 
Iron Mask, whom no one has ever seen or known. 
This prisoner was brought to the Bastile by M. de 
St. Mars, in a litter, when he took possession of the 
government of the Bastile, coming from his governor- 
ship of the Isle Ste. Marguerite and St. Honorat, and 



The Unknown of the Bastile. 89 

whom lie had before had with him at Pignerol. This 
prisoner was treated with distinction by the gov- 
ernor, and was only seen by him and M. de Rosarges, 
Mayor of the Fortress, who had the care of him." 
And again, five years later : 
" Date of Death.— November 19, 1703. 
" Observations. — Died, November 19, 1703, aged 
forty-five, or thereabouts,* and buried at St. Paul's the 
next day, at four in the afternoon, under the name of 
Marchiali, in the presence of M. de Bosarges, Mayor 
of the Fortress, and of M. Beilh, Surgeon-Major of 
the Bastile, who signed their names to the extract of 
the burial-register of St. Paul's. His burial cost forty 
livres. This prisoner remained at the Bastile five 
years and sixty-two days, the day of his burial not 
included. He was only ill for some hours, and died 
almost suddenly ; he was buried in a winding-sheet of 
new linen ; and for the most part every thing that 
was found in his chamber was burnt, such as every 
part of his bed, including the mattresses, his tables, 
chairs, and other utensils, which were all reduced to 
powder and to cinders, and thrown into the drains. 
The rest of the things, such as the silver, copper, and 
pewter, were melted. This prisoner was lodged in 

* The Bastile record undoubtedly understates his age. 



90 Who Was He? 

the tower Bertaudiere, which room was scraped and 
filed quite to the stone, and fresh whitewashed from 
the top to the bottom. The doors and windows were 
burnt like the rest." 

Attention has been called to the fact that in the 
name " Marchiali," which was given to the Unknown' 
in the burial-register of St. Paul's, are to be found 
the exact letters of the two following words, one 
Latin, the other French : Hie Amiral, namely, " Here 
is the admiral." The discovery of this far-fetched 
anagram was one of the causes which led to the wild 
supposition that the Iron Mask was either the Due de 
Beaufort or the Comte de Vermandois, both of whom 
were great admirals of France. 

The array of names put forward, as in other cases, 
by various writers and theorizers on this alluring 
topic is sufficient evidence of the magnificent conject- 
ures of former days. The " claims of Arwediks, an 
Armenian patriarch forcibly carried off from Con- 
stantinople ; of the Due de Vermandois, son of Louis 
XIV., who was reported to have perished in the 
French camp before Dixmude ; of the Due de Beau- 
fort, whose head was said to have been taken off be- 
fore Candia ; of James, Duke of Monmouth, executed 
on Tower Hill after the fatal battle of Sedgemoor, 



The Unknown of the Bastile. 91 

but whom many believed to have escaped ; of a natu- 
ral son of Anne of Austria, wife of Louis XIII., by 
Cardinal Mazarin or by the Duke of Buckingham ; 
of the twin brother of Louis XIV. ; of a Chevalier de 
Kiffenbach, accused of plotting against the life of 
Louis ; of Foucquet, an eminent and accomplished 
statesman of the time of Louis XIY. ; and of Count 
Matthioli, secretary of State to Charles III., Duke of 
Mantua, have been presented by such writers as Vol- 
taire, Dutens, St. Foix, La Grange Chancel, Gibbon, 
Pere Papon, Pere Grilfet, the Chevalier de Tantes, 
Mr. Quintin Cravvfurd, the Hon. G. Agar Ellis, M. 
Delort, Paul Lacroix, M. Letournier, and M. Roux. 
But most of the foregoing can be readily disposed of. 

1. Arwediks, the Armenian patriarch, is known to 
have died at least ten years before the Mask. 

2. The Comte de Vermandois, son of Louis XIY. 
and Madame de Valliere, died in the camp before 
Dixmude, in 1683, and his body was interred at 
Arras.* 

3. The Due de Beaufort was a grandson of Henry 
IY. Being sent to assist the Yenetians against the 
Turks, he w T as slain and beheaded by the latter at the 
siege of Candia in 1669.f 

* f See page 90 for a reference to these two men. 



92 Who Was II k? 

4. The belief that James, Duke of Monmouth, the 
darling of the people, who was executed on Tower 
Hill by order of James II., was the Mask, has no 
other basis than the reluctance of the masses, peculiar 
to all climes and to all people, to believe in the death 
of a popular idol.* 

5. The hypothesis that makes the Mask a natural 
and elder son of Anne of Austria, mother of Louis 
XIY., is the one that finds favor with Yoltaire. 
Such a child might have disputed the succession, 
hence the motive for his suppression by a life-long im- 
prisonment. The historian Gibbon arrives at much 
the same conclusion. The prisoner's love of fine linen 
was adduced as corroborative evidence, as Anne's aver- 
sion to coarse drapery amounted to almost a mania. 

6. That the Mask was a twin brother of Louis 
XIY. is believed by many — that he was the latest 
born, and for reasons of State policy was suppressed, 
and his existence kept a secret. The story that he 
was imprisoned for boxing the dauphin's ears is prob- 
ably only another of the many wild conjectures 
drawn forth by this thrilling tale. 

Foucquet and Kiifenbach are now admitted to have 
had no proper place in the controversy. 

* See page 11. 



The Unknown of the Bastile. 93 

These, then, are some of the leading theories put 
forward by those who have essayed to clear up what 
has been termed the most singular and astounding of 
all historical mysteries. Of them all, Nos. 5 and 6 
least violate the laws of probability. 

But, amid these romantic, conflicting, and highly- 
spiced conjectures, the assertion was made that the 
Iron Mask was really a personage of no great impor- 
tance in the social scale ; that no noble blood coursed 
through his veins, and that political treachery, and 
not the exigencies of royalty, was the cause of his 
merciless and lifelong detention. Thus we come 
to the consideration of the last name on the list 
— that of the Count Matthioli — and of the nar- 
ratives of M. Delort and the Hon. G. Agar 
Ellis. 

M. Delort obtained access to the musty archives of 
the French foreign department during the reign of 
Louis XIV., and found documentary evidence point- 
ing to the conclusion that the Iron Mask was none 
other than Count Matthioli. To M. Roux belongs 
the honor of first naming the count, for in a pam- 
phlet issued in 1801 he published abstracts of several 
of the documents subsequently seen by M. Delort. 
In 1827 the Lion. G. Agar Ellis, afterward Lord Dover, 



94 Who Was He 2 

gave to the world a work in English* containing, 
besides his own narrative, translations of the whole 
series of State papers collated by Delort. These 
documents consisted chiefly of correspondence be- 
tween Louvois and other French ministers and gen- 
erals and M. de St. Mars, the custodian of the Mask, 
and relate largely to the keeping and treating of the 
mysterious prisoner, who in these documents is often 
referred to as "the Sieur de Lestang." There is, 
however, one link missing in the case presented in 
favor of the count, to which we shall refer later. 
Here is the story of his life : 

Hercules Anthony Matthioli was a native of Bo- 
logna. He came of an ancient and honorable family, 
distinguished in the legal profession. His parents 
were Valerian Matthioli and Girolama Maggi. and 
he first saw the light December 1, 1640. He mar- 
ried, January 13, 1661, Camilla Piatesi, a widow, by 
whom he had two sons, but his posterity ultimately 
sank into obscurity. 

About the time of his marriage he filled the post of 
public reader in the famous University of Bologna, but 
eventually quitted his native city to enter the service 
of Charles III., Duke of Mantua. So greatly pleased 

* History of the State Prisoner called the Iron Mask, London, 1827. 



The Unknown of the Bastile. 95 

t 

was the duke with his services that he promoted 
Matthioli to be Secretary of State. The successor of 
Charles III., Ferdinand Charles IV., the last ruler of 
the house of Gonzaga, created Matthioli supernu- 
merary Senator of Mantua, a post that had been he- 
reditary in his family, and gave him the title of count. 
Precisely when Matthioli ceased to be Secretary of 
State does not appear. It is certain that he was not 
in that office when he became involved in an intrigue 
which, as is believed by many, cost him liberty and 
life. 

Ferdinand was a weak and unfortunate prince. 
Himself and his court were ruled by his mother, 
Isabella Clara of Austria, while the young duke, 
" plunged into pleasures and excesses of every kind, 
took little apparent interest in politics." He died 
July 5, 1708, it was thought, of poison administered 
by a lady with whom he was in love. 

At this time France and Spain were bitter rivals in 
the Italian States bordering on the Mediterranean. 
About the end of 1677 the Abbe de Estrades was 
embassador from the Court of Louis XIY. to the 
Eepublic of Venice. He " conceived the idea, which 
he was well aware would be highly acceptable to the 
insatiable ambition of his master, of inducing the 



96 Who Was He? 

Duke of Mantua to permit the introduction of a 
French garrison into Casale, a strongly fortified 
town, the capital of the Montferrat," and then con- 
sidered the key of Italy. In 1632 the French had 
become possessed of the fortress of Pignerol, which 
gave them control of Piedmont ; could they but gain 
Casale, the Milanese would also be at their mercy. 

There was one great barrier to the success of this 
crafty scheme. Isabella Clara, the mother of the 
young duke, w r as a stanch partisan of the Court of 
Spain, and would be certain to bitterly oppose the 
project. It must be kept from her at any cost. So 
it w r as resolved to privately approach the duke him- 
self, who was known to feel somewhat chagrined at 
the subjection in which he was kept by his mother. 
It was also suspected that he was none too friendly 
to the Spaniards, whom he suspected of casting an 
equally longing eye on Casale and the Montferrat. 

A trusty emissary between Estrades and the duke 
was needed, and the Abbe thought he had found such 
in the Count Matthioli, who was an adept in the wiles 
of Italian politics, who was in the duke's confidence, 
and who shared his antipathies to the Spaniards. 
But the cautious Estrades would not trust his man 
till he had sent some one to spy on him and find out 



The Unknown of the Bastile. 97 

his inclinations. These being- found favorable, one 
Giuliani was sent to Matthioli with proposals that he 
represent to the duke the advantages to be derived 
from placing himself under the protection of France. 

Matthioli entered into the intrigue, and promised 
to see his prince. This he did, and reported to 
Estrades, through Giuliani, that the duke was entirely 
favorable to the alliance with France, and to the ces- 
sion of Casale, on condition that he receive a grant 
of money, and be made generalissimo of any French 
army that might be sent into Italy. 

When the matter was thus far advanced the Abbe 
d'Estrades sent an account of the plot to Louis XIY., 
who, as might be expected, thought well of the 
scheme. The negotiations continued to progress 
favorably, and at length, on the 13th of March, 1678, 
during the carnival at Venice, the Duke of Mantua 
and the Abbe d' Estrades held a secret interview in 
one of the open squares of the city. On this occasion 
the duke expressed himself as very anxious for the 
settlement of the matter. In November, 1678, 
Matthioli set out for Paris, ostensibly to conduct the 
final negotiations, and obtained an interview with 
Louis XIY., who presented him with a valuable 



98 Who Was He > 

But suddenly Matthioli's ardor cooled. By one 
pretext and another he delayed the conclusion of 
the affair. u At one moment his own ill-health de- 
tained him at Mantua ; at another, the Duke of 
Mantua could not raise a sufficient sum of money to 
enable him to transport his court to Casale ; and 
again, the duke was obliged to stay at Venice, having 
promised to hold a carnival there." The truth of the 
matter seems to be that Matthioli had been playing a 
double game with the French diplomat e. Whether 
or no he at first looked favorably on the scheme to 
sell Casale does not appear ; it is certain, however, 
that, at a later stage of the proceedings, while pre- 
tending to the French to forward their interests, he 
used all his influence with his master to dissuade him 
from tli e design. 

" This faithful minister," says one writer, " made 
the duke understand that it was necessary for his 
interest and his honor to preserve his duchy inviolate* 
and thus made him change his intention ; he did 
still more — he obliged him to unite himself with 
other princes of Italy in a league to oppose the 
designs of France. He visited almost nil the Courts 
of Italy ; he went to Venice and Genoa ; and he suc- 
ceeded every-where so well that he had almost 



The Unknown of the Bastile. 99 

entirely detached those powers from the interests of 
France. Finally, he went to Turin witli the same 
object." If he imagined that his movements were 
unknown to the agents of Louis XIV. he was mis- 
taken. The ministers of the French court, b} r means 
of their spies, had been kept apprised of all his 
movements. The various excuses made by Matthioli 
for the non-execution of his pledges, all more or less 
frivolous, appear to have first awakened in the French 
government a suspicion of his fidelity. 

But so secure did Matthioli feel, that he often 
visited the Marquis d'Arcy, the French embassador 
at the Court of Savoy, though that minister was all 
the time kept fully informed of the doubts current 
about the integrity of his guest. "He paid him 
many civilities, asked him very often to dinner, and 
finally invited him to come and hunt with him at 
some distance from Turin." Matthioli endeavored to 
excuse himself on the plea of having no horses, but 
the embassador disposed of that difficulty by offering 
to lend him some. The secretary dared not refuse, 
lest thereby he should invite suspicion. 

" The day for the hunt being arrived, they set off 
together, but they were hardly at the distance of a 
league from the town when Matthioli was surrounded 



100 Who Was He? 

by ten or twelve horsemen, who seized him, dis- 
guised him, masked him, aud conducted him to the 
fortress of Pignerol." From this time Matthioli was 
lost to the haunts of men. 

Such is the narrative pieced together by Messrs. 
Delort and Ellis. It is undoubtedly historically cor- 
rect up to the seizure of Matthioli and his incar- 
ceration in Pignerol. The identifying him with the 
Mask is not so certain a matter. 

After the arrest it became important, we are told, 
u to recover some documents which Matthioli had 
received from the French government for the pur- 
pose of concluding the treaty, and those being con- 
cealed at Padua, the prisoner was compelled to write 
for them to his father. Three letters were accord- 
ingly prepared and entrusted to Giuliani, with orders 
to deliver one or more in succession, as circumstances 
might require. Matthioli himself was in the mean 
time rigorously examined by Catinat, as to the cir- 
cumstances and motives of his treason. The culprit 
prevaricated ; the inquisitor threatened, and, on one 
occasion, Catinat terrified his prisoner by calling in 
soldiers to administer the torture. He acknowledged 
that, in passing through Turin, on his return from 
Paris, he had betrayed the secret to his friend, the 



The Unknown of the Bastile. 101 

President Turki, with whom he afterward corre- 
sponded on the subject ; that he had received two 
thousand livres at Turin, but only as a recompense 
for some former services ; that he had held commu- 
nication respecting the treaty both with the Spanish 
governor of Milan, and with individuals in the Ger- 
man service, but that these were already apprised of 
the transaction by the Duke of Mantua's mother, 
who had drawn an avowal from her son. He de- 
clared that he himself always intended to fulfill his 
engagements with France, and had, with that view, 
obtained credentials under the hand of Ferdinand 
which would have enabled him to have secured 
Casale even after the duke's defection ; but the 
papers themselves, when delivered to Giuliani, proved 
inadequate to such a purpose. Catinat returned to 
France, leaving Matthioli, whom, for the better con- 
cealment, he had named L'Estang, a close prisoner in 
the hands of St. Mars." 

Assuming, for the present, at least, that Matthi- 
oli and the Mask are identical, let us glance at 
the prisons and the prison life of the unfortunate 
man. 

The fortress of Pignerol was the citadel of the 
town of the same name, in Italy, at the foot of 



102 Who Was He? 

the Alps, about twenty miles south-west of Turin. 
Here, in " the lower part of the tower," in a dungeon 

" Dim with a dull, imprisoned ray — 
A sunbeam which had lost its way, 
And through the crevice and the cleft 
Of the thick wall is fallen and left; 
Creeping o'er the floor so damp, 
Like a marsh-meteor's lamp," 

Matthioli was confined — at first alone', but subse- 
quently, to save expense and trouble, a crazy Jacobin 
monk was given him for company. 

In the correspondence between Louvois and M. de 
St. Mars, respecting the treatment of the prisoner at 
Pignerol, the name of Matthioli frequently occurs 
until July 9, 16S1, when all mention of him by name 
ceases, and thenceforward the difficulty of identifying 
Matthioli with the Mask is enhanced. That at this 
period his release was deemed possible is proved by 
the following extract from a letter of Louvois on the 
eve of the removal of St. Mars to Exilles : 

" With regard to the effects belonging to the Sieur 
Matthioli, which are in your possession, you will 
have them taken to Exilles in order to be given back 
to him if ever his majesty should order him to be set 
at liberty." 



The Unknown of the Bastile. 103 

The question arises, Whether Matthioli was of suf- 
ficient importance, either socially or politically, to 
warrant such stringent precautions as we have seen 
were taken to insure his remaining incognito? Had 
he been of royal blood, and occupying the relation 
toward the throne of France of a possible claimant, 
is it conceivable that his release would ever have 
been deemed remotely possible ? These are difficult 
questions for the advocates of the Matthioli theory to 
answer — they have never been answered. The above 
extract shows that Louvois made no secret of the 
name of Matthioli in his early correspondence with 
M. de St. Mars ; why, then, if the Mask and Matthi- 
oli were identical, were the custodians of the former 
ordered to kill him if he uncovered or divulged 
his identity ? Further, Matthioli having been kid- 
napped by a party of soldiers, there must have 
been for several years a number of witnesses living 
who were acquainted with the facts, and who, in the 
eager quest for the solution of the mystery surround- 
ing the Iron Mask, could have easily been reached. 
Yet none of them ever spoke. Do not all the 
known facts point irresistibly to the conclusion that 
Matthioli could not have been the Mask ? Of this, 
however, more anon. 



104 Who Was I1k? 

Shortly after the year 1G81 the unhappy pair of 
prisoners became nameless, and we find them thence- 
forward referred to as " the two prisoners in the lower 
part of the tower." The records show that these two 
companions in misery accompanied St. Mars when 
lie was transferred to Exilles. The Jacobin priest 
died in this fortress, and then we find St. Mars con- 
veying a solitary figure, mysteriously denoted " the 
prisoner," with him to Ste. Marguerite and to the 
.Bastile, and always with the same painful secresy. 
When this carefully-guarded culprit enters France 
proper his features are shrouded behind a mask. It 
is also to be noted that all the versions of the confine- 
ment of the Iron Mask agree in stating that he was 
first kept at Pignerol, then transferred to Exilles, 
Ste. Marguerite, and the Bastile. 

Now, if Matthioli were the Mask, one would sup- 
pose that the time for disguise would be while he 
remained on foreign soil, where the risk of escape, 
discovery, or recapture would be greater, and that, 
once his captors had him safe on French soil, all ne- 
cessity for concealment would be at an end. On the 
other hand, were the Mask of French royal lineage, 
the necessity of this precaution would be apparent. 
To the question so often propounded during this 



The Unknown of the Bastile. 105 

century, Who else but Mattliioli could the Iron Mask 
be? The answer is that St. Mars, in all likelihood, 
had the custody of both Mattliioli and the mysterious 
Mask ; that the former died, or was quietly released 
long prior to the removal of the latter to the Bastile, 
and that the personage so jealously guarded from dis- 
covery was probably of far greater importance than 
the secretary of the ruler of a petty Italian state. 

But let us resume the narrative. 

"In 1681," we are told, " St. Mars was removed to 
the command of Exilles, a few leagues from Pignerol, 
but ' the prisoners ' were not suffered to pass into the 
hands of a new jailer ; St. Mars carried them with 
him. They traveled in a litter, and under military 
escort. Their new lodging was prepared with the 
most anxious attention to secresy ; two soldiers of St. 
Mars's own company watched the tower in which 
they lay ; passengers were not allowed to linger in its 
neighborhood, and the governor could observe the 
sentinels from his own window. A lieutenant slept 
above the prisoners, and received from the servants 
whatever was brought for their use ; their physician 
never spoke to them but in St. Mars's presence ; a 
permanent screen was contrived, so that the priest 
who said mass to them did not see their persons, and 



106 Who Was He? 

their confessor was commanded never to ask their 
names or inquire into their former condition, to re- 
ceive no message or writing from them, and never to 
talk of them.'' 

The fortress of Exilles was a stronghold command- 
ing the pass near Susa, on the frontier of Piedmont 
and the Erianconnois. The place constantly changed 
masters during the many European wars that deso- 
lated the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The 
following letter from St. Mars to the minister Lou- 
vois gives a glimpse at the condition and mode of 
life of the prisoners while there : 

"Exilles, March 11, 1682. 
" Sir : I have received the letter which you were 
pleased to do me the honor to write to me on the 
27th of last month, in which you acquaint me, sir, 
that it is important my two prisoners should have no 
communication with any one. Since the first time 
that you, sir, gave me this order, I have guarded 
these two prisoners, who are under my care, as se- 
verely and exactly as I formerly did Messieurs Fou- 
quet and Lauzun, who could not boast that they had 
either sent or received any news while they were in 
confinement. These prisoners can hear the people 



The Unknown of the Bastile. 107 

speak as they pass along tlie road which is at the 
bottom of the tower; but they, if they wished it, 
could not make themselves heard ; they can see the 
persons on the hill which is before their windows, 
but cannot themselves be seen on account of the bars 
which are placed across their room. There are two 
sentinels of my company always night and day on 
each side of the tower, at a reasonable distance : who 
can see the window of the prisoners obliquely. 
They are ordered to take care that no one speaks to 
them, and that they do not cry out from their win- 
dows ; and to make the passengers walk on if they 
wish to stop in the path or on the side of the hill. 
My own room being joined to the tower, and having 
no other look-out except toward this path, I hear and 
see every thing, even my two sentinels, who are by 
this means always kept alert. 

" As for the inside of the tower, I have divided it 
in such a manner that the priest who says mass to 
them cannot see them on account of a curtain I have 
made, which covers their double doors. The serv- 
ants, who bring their food, put whatever is necessary 
for the prisoners upon a table on the outside, and my 
lieutenant carries it in to them. No one speaks to 
them except myself, my lieutenant, M. Yigneron, the 



108 Who Was He? 

confessor, and a physician, who only sees them in my 
presence. 

" I am, etc., De Saint-Mars." 

The foregoing severe, and even harsh, treatment 
meted ont to the prisoner whom we must regard as 
Matthioli does not accord with the known facts re- 
specting the environment of the Iron Mask in the 
Bastile. Either a marked change took place in his 
treatment, or two different personages are to be con- 
sidered, though of course it is possible, as time tied, 
that the rigors were somewhat relaxed. 

M. de St. Mars was, in 1687, transferred to the 
command of the island of Sainte Marguerite, which, 
with Saint Honorat, constitute the two chief islets of 
a group in the Mediterranean, near the coast, and in 
the Department of Var. They are now known as 
the Lerins Isles. Here stood a military fortress or 
prison, which still exists. As before, St. Mars took 
with him his mysterious captive. 

His prison at the He de Ste. Marguerite consisted 
of a room lighted by a single window on the north, 
which was pierced in a wall several feet in thickness, 
fortified with bars of iron, and looking upon the sea, 
whence its occupant might have 



The Unknown of the Bastile. 109 

" Felt the winter's spray 
Wash through the bars when winds were high 
And wanton in the cloudy sky." 

The unknown was removed from Exilles in a spe- 
cies of sedan-chair or litter, u borne by men, and cov- 
ered with oilcloth, so that he was invisible even to 
the soldiers who closely surrounded him. The un- 
fortunate captive fell sick on the way for want of 
air ; St. Mars hastened his journey, but still kept his 
prisoner from all men's view, of course exciting, by 
his precautions, a general eagerness to know who the 
concealed person was." 

In 1698 St. Mars was again promoted, this time to 
the command of the Bastile, in Paris, and the Mask 
was conveyed thither in another close litter, and care- 
fully escorted by a troop of soldiers. 

The testimony in favor of the supposition that 
Matthioli was the Iron Mask is in the main purely 
circumstantial. Yet the cumulative effect of this 
evidence, much of it fragmentary and gleaned from 
widely divergent sources, is very strong, and would 
be well-nigh conclusive, but for a few serious flaws. 
Some of these we have already noted. Attention 
has been called by various writers to the undoubted 
fact that at the time of the seizure of Matthioli, and 



110 Who Was He? 

his subsequent disappearance from the scene of the 
world's activities, no second person of eminence in 
the whole of Europe was known to be missing. It has 
been claimed that all the clues connected with other 
names end abruptly, and that there is absolutely no 
other personage around whom the known facts can 
be made to group themselves. But if we suppose 
that the Mask was in truth a brother of Louis XIV., 
and that, to avoid all chance of a war of succession, 
he had been immured in prison from infancy, this 
objection falls to the ground. The existence of such 
a child could have been known to but few, and the 
lips of that limited circle were resolutely silent con- 
cerning the mystery. 

Again : We are confronted with the fact that 
while the imprisonment of the Mask dates from 
1662, the Count Matthioli was not arrested until 
1678, sixteen years later. It is clear, then, that some 
other personage was confined during those sixteen 
years who was guarded with great secrecy, and who, 
at the time of the first public mention of his incar- 
ceration, in 1662, was young and handsome, and of 
noble birth. Unless this discrepancy can be ex- 
plained it would seem that the elaborate case of 
Messrs. Delort and Ellis must fall to the ground. 



The Unknown of the Bastile. Ill 

The writer lias seen no reference to this matter by 
any of the authorities on the subject, yet certain it is 
that Voltaire and others name the year 1GG2 as the 
beginning of the imprisonment of the person who 
afterward became celebrated as the Iron Mask, while 
it is equally unquestionable that the arrest of Mat- 
thioli did not occur until 1678. 

We have shown that the most extraordinary pre- 
cautions were taken to guard against the discovery of 
the identity of the Unknown until and after the 
day of his death in the gloomy recesses of the Bastile. 
Only one or two persons were allowed to enter his 
presence; even the administrations of a confessor 
w T ere denied for a time, and when at last a priest was 
permitted to visit him it was always in the presence 
of M. de St. Mars or of his trusty lieutenant. The 
advocates of the Matthioli theory find ample warrant 
for this caution in the fact that by his seizure and 
subsequent incarceration an unwarrantable offense 
against the law of nations had been committed. For, 
says Mr. Ellis, " Matthioli, at the time of his arrest, 
was the plenipotentiary of the Duke of Mantua for 
concluding a treaty with the king of France, and for 
that very sovereign to kidnap him and confine him 
in a dungeon was certainly one of the most flagrant 



112 Who Was He? 

acts of violence that could be committed ; one which, 
if known, would have had the most injurious effect 
upon the negotiations of Louis with other sovereigns ; 
nay, would probably have indisposed other sover- 
eigns to treat at all with him. It is true the Duke 
of Mantua was a prince insignificant both in power 
and character, but if in this way might was allowed 
to overcome right, who could possibly tell whose turn 
might be the next ? Besides, it was important for 
Louis that the Duke of Mantua should also be kept 
in good humor, the delivery of Casale not having 
been effected ; nor is it to be supposed that he would 
have consented to give it up to the French monarch 
within two years- of this period had he had a suspi- 
cion of the way his diplomatic agent and intended 
prime minister had been treated. The same reasons 
for concealment existed till the death of Mattlrioli, 
since that event happened while both Louis XIV. 
and the Duke of Mantua were still alive, which ac- 
counts for his confinement continuing to be always 
solitary and always secret." 

Mr. Ellis thinks that Louis XIV., whose vindictive 
nature is well known, determined to exact ample 
revenge to " satisfy his wounded pride and frustrated 
ambition," and to this end consigned the count to a 



The Unknown of the Bastile. 113 

dungeon from whence only death could deliver him. 
" The arrest of Matthioli certainly appears to have 
been the effect of a vindictive feeling against him in 
the breast of Louis himself ; for it is impossible to 
imagine that any minister would have ventured, of 
his own free-will, upon a step by which so much was 
to be hazarded and nothing, in fact, was to be 
gained. The act is only to be explained in this man- 
ner : that the monarch insisted upon his revenge, 
which the ministers were obliged to gratify, and at 
the same time, in order to prevent any ill conse- 
quences that might result from it, determined upon 
burying the whole transaction under the most im- 
penetrable veil of mystery. The confinement of 
Matthioli is decidedly one of the deadliest stains that 
blot the character of Louis XIV. ; for, granting that 
Matthioli betrayed the trust reposed in him by that 
monarch, one single act of diplomatic treachery was 
surely not sufficient to warrant the infliction of the 
most horrible of punishments — solitary confinement 
in a dungeon." 

But, even granting that Louis XIY. was as bitterly 

revengeful as here represented, is not the story of the 

imprisonment of the Mask utterly disproportioned to 

the offense of Matthioli ? Is it conceivable that a 

8 



114 Who Was He? 

culprit whose treachery merited solitary confinement 
for life would have been treated with so great per- 
sonal respect and consideration ? In short, the advo- 
cates of the Matthioli theory prove altogether too 
much. The picture which they present only serves 
to pile up the circumstantial proof that the Iron 
Mask was a personage of infinitely more importance 
to the crown of France than could have been the 
envoy of a fifth-rate European kinglet. 

With regard to the treatment of the Mask during 
his long captivity authorities differ, as we have seen. 
Some represent that every thing short of absolute 
cruelty or torture was done to render life intolerable 
to the prisoner, and Matthioli's confinement in the 
dungeon at Pignerol, and the placing of a crazy 
monk in his cell, are adduced to support this view. 

On the other hand, equally trustworthy authorities 
say that the Mask was treated with profound respect 
and " distinguished consideration ;" that St. Mars 
waited on him in person, and always remained stand- 
ing and bareheaded in his presence ; and that his 
slightest wishes or caprices, within certain limits, 
were gratified. 

Does not the existence of these two sets of equally 
credible details point conclusively to the fact that there 



The Unknown of the Bastile. 115 

were two prisoners — a disgraced embassador and an 
unfortunate, but personally blameless, scion of the 
royal family of France ? In the one case no punish- 
ment could be too severe for the outraged majesty of 
the foremost nation of Europe to inflict on him who 
had betrayed her ; in the other, every effort was made 
to ameliorate the cruel condition of him who was 
perforce sacrificed to the welfare of the State. 

As bearing on the supposed identity of Matthioli 
with the Iron Mask, the two following extracts are 
not without interest. M. Dutens,* says : 

"In order to treat this subject (that of the Iron 
Mask) methodically, I will begin with what the Duke 
de Choiseul has often related to me. Louis XY. once 
day told him that he was acquainted with the history 
of the prisoner with the Mask. The duke begged the 
king to tell him who he was, but he could get no 
other answer from him except' that all the con- 
jectures which had been hitherto made with regard 
to the prisoner were false. Some time afterward 
Madame de Pompadour, at the request of the duke, 
pressed the king to explain himself upon this subject. 
Louis XY. upon this told her that he believed he was 
the minister of an Italian prince." 

* La Correspondance Interceptee, 1789. 



116 Who Was He? 

The same testimony, in slightly different garb, is 
produced by Mr. Quintin Crawfurd :* 

" I had heard it said that M. de Choiseul had spoken 
to Louis XY. on the subject of the masked prisoner, 
but that he had not been able to obtain any satisfac- 
tory answer. I addressed myself to the Abbe Bar- 
thelemi and to the Abbe Beliardi, who had both 
lived in intimacy with M. de Choiseul; they ac- 
quainted me that it was at their request the Duke de 
Choiseul had spoken upon this subject to Louis XY. ; 
that the king had answered him that he believed the 
prisoner was a minister of one of the courts of Italy, 
but that the duke observed that this conversation ap- 
peared to embarrass him. The Abbe Beliardi told 
me in proper terms that the king wished to evade 
the subject. They then begged M. de Choiseul to 
engage Madame de Pompadour to speak to the king. 
She did so ; but the answer of Louis XY. to his mis- 
tress was not more instructive than that which he had 
given to his minister." 

We venture to say that the foregoing evidence, 
coining as it does from manifestly interested or prob- 
ably biased parties, would not count for much in a 
court of law. 

* Melanges cV Histoire et de Litterature. 



The Unknown of the B as tile.. 117 

A mournful interest will ever cling to the moving 
tale of the Unknown of the Bastile. With the Pris- 
oner of Chillon he might well have said : 

" My hair is gray, but not with years, 

Nor grew it white 

In a single night, 
As men's have grown with sudden fears: 
' My limbs are bowed, though not with toil, 

But rusted with a vile repose, 
For they have been a-dungeon's spoil, 

And mine has been the fate of those 
To whom the goodly earth and air 
Are banned and barred, forbidden fare." 

He died, was buried, and carried his weird secret 
to the silence of the grave. Though a more romantic 
atmosphere would perhaps surround the story were 
we able to assert that without a doubt the brother of 
a king, or even a royal duke, was thus consigned to a 
living tomb, the mysterious and tragic features of the 
case appeal just as powerfully to the sympathy and 
the imagination when we are forced to confess that 
the identity of the Man in the Iron Mask is still an 
impenetrable secret, known only to Him who reads 
and fathoms the hearts of men. 



III. 

THE 

YOUTH WHO FELL FROM CROWN TO KITCHEN, 

AND 

SOME SIMILAR STRANGE STORIES. 



THE YOUTH WHO FELL FROM 
CROWN TO KITCHEN. 




jENRY, Earl of Richmond, the founder 
of the royal line of Tudor, 
ascended the throne of England 
in 1485, after defeating Richard 
III. on Bosworth field. Pie was the 
champion and acknowledged leader of 
the House of Lancaster, and w T as also not 
without favor in the sight of the rival York- 
ist party. To establish the new dynasty more firmly,- 
and to still more firmly cement the allegiance of all En- 
glishmen, Henry, in 1486, married Elizabeth, daughter 
of Edward IV., an event which gladdened the hearts 
of his people from Solent to Firth of Forth. 

The reign thus auspiciously begun was in the main 
fortunate for the nation, though the king's rapacity 
and occasional lack of veracity dimmed the luster of 
his prudence, vigor, and excellent aptitude for public 



122 Who Was He? 

affairs. Ko great wars disturbed his sway, yet for 
many years the court and the country were kept 
in a fever of excitement by the intrigues of the par- 
titans of two youthful claimants to the throne, whose 
stories were so plausible — not to say probable — as to 
entitle them to rank among the historic doubts 
which have remained unsolved until our own time. 
We will glance at them in the order of their occur- 
rence. 

While men of all parties w T ere united in their 
fealty to Henry, and rejoiced at the cessation of the 
bloody wars that had desolated for so many years the 
fairest of her shires," there were not wanting in nooks 
and corners of the kingdom knots of turbulent and 
factious men ready to leap into insurrection on the 
slightest pretext. A danger of this sort first show T ed 
itself in Ireland. An intriguing priest intimated to 
an assemblage of warlike chieftains, held in Dublin, 
that the true heir of the English crown was then in 
his possession, and, on their vowing to espouse his 
cause, presented to them a remarkably well-favored 
and intelligent youth as Edward, Earl of Warwick, 
nephew of Edward IV., and son of that Duke Cla- 
rence (brother of Edward IY.) who came to such an 
ignominious and untimely end in a butt of wine. 



From Crown to Kitchen. 123 

Now, Henry's claim to the throne was of a very slen- 
der nature, as he very well knew. By his father, the 
Earl of Richmond, he was descended from the royal 
line of France ; by his mother, Margaret Beaufort, 
he derived his title to the English throne, as one of 
her ancestors was John of Gaunt, head of the House 
of Lancaster. Therefore the appearance of this 
young rival, claiming to be Edward, Earl of War- 
wick, nephew of Edward IV., was truly a most em- 
barrassing turn of affairs. Was his claim a just 
one? 

The Irish hated the English yoke then as now, 
and any pretense, however ill-founded, was sufficient 
to arouse them to arms. But so well substantiated 
was the story told by the claimant and his sponsor, 
the priest, that it doubtless appeared in those lawless 
times of sufficient weight upon which to wage war. 
The boy was hailed with acclamations as nearest in 
succession to Edward IV., and preparations were at 
once set on foot to assert his claim. 

As a first step messengers were sent into Flanders 
to solicit substantial aid from the Duchess of Bur- 
gundy, a sister of Edward IV., who cordially hated 
Henry VII. and all his ways. The assistance of the 
duchess was promptly given, and two thousand men- 



124 Who Was He? 

at-arms were placed under the command of Martin 
Swartz, a famous Free-lance, and despatched to Dub- 
lin. There the boy was crowned king of England in 
the great cathedral, and John, Earl of Lincoln, son of 
the Duke of Suffolk, and himself a nephew of roy- 
alty, acknowledged the newly coroneted boy as the 
rightful sovereign of England. The Earl of Kildare, 
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, also threw himself at his 
feet, and caused him to be proclaimed to the four 
winds of heaven from the ramparts of Dublin 
Castle. 

The news soon spread across the Channel to En- 
gland, and the Irish rising found an answer in 
many an English yeoman's heart. When tidings" of 
these doings reached Henry at Westminster he " went 
in royal state through the disaffected parts of the 
eastern counties ; he put on penitential apparel, and 
went in holy pilgrimage to the shrine of our Lady of 
Walsingham, and sought to enlist Heaven on his side 
by the splendor of his gifts and promises. He then 
proceeded to Kenilworth, where he left his wife and 
son in safety, and having seen the disposition of 
many parts of his kingdom, and procured a bull 
from the Pope anathematizing any person who took 
up arms to oppose him in the enjoyment of the 



From Crown to Kitchen. 125 

throne, lie prepared for the struggle with the in- 
surgents." 

But his long inactivity had emboldened the party 
of the young Edward, and the " expedition of hungry 
Germans and savage Irish " set sail across the Irish 
Sea, and landed in England at a secluded spot in 
Westmoreland. Marching inland and southward, 
they gained accessions to their ranks from the disaf- 
fected every-where, and by the time the insurgent 
army reached the gates of York it amounted to live 
or six thousand men. 

On June. 16 the opposing forces of Henry came 
in sight, and both sides prepared for battle. Henry 
does not appear to have been unduly confident, either 
as to the justice of his own title to the throne or as 
to the result of the impending struggle. Just before 
the onset he is reported to have said : 

" If yonder stripling wins, I lose my crown ; if I 
win, I will make him a scullion in my kitchen!" 
But the result belied his fears, if he had any. The 
sturdy English yeomanry made short work of the 
Irish and German mercenaries, and the slaughter was 
terrific. More than half the invading force was slain ; 
Lincoln and Fitzgerald bit the dust ; while among 
the prisoners was the rash aspirant to the throne. 



126 Who Was He 3 

Being brought before Henry, and questioned, he 
confessed that the whole affair was an imposture ; 
"that his real name was Lambert Simnel, that he was 
the son of a baker at Oxford, and that he had been 
tutored for his part by the friar, whose name was 
Simon." 

True to his word, Henry degraded the self-con- 
fessed pretender to the rank of scullion in the royal 
kitchen, but such was his address that he afterward 
rose to be king's falconer, an office of some honor in 
those days. Thus ends this short-lived romance. 

Scarcely had the echoes of this battle died away, or 
its cause been consigned to oblivion, than a new and 
far more formidable aspirant to the throne arose. The 
long and curious romance of Perkyn Warbeck sprung 
into life, with Lambert Simnel and his fate in full 
view, and was " carried through with a princely dig- 
nity and consistency of behavior that won many to 
the cause." 

" Richard IY. " was the title assumed or claimed 
by this youth. He first appeared, as his predecessor 
had done, on the shores of Ireland, and declared that 
he was not the nephew of a king, but Richard of 
York, son of Edward IY., who had contrived to 
escape from the Tower when his elder brother, 



From Crown to Kitchen. 127 

Edward V., had been murdered by Forest and 
Dighton ! 

Tliis revived an episode in English history that, by 
its elements of romance, cruelty, and mystery, has ever 
appealed to the sympathies of the people, and which, 
at the time of which we write, was still fresh in 
memory. The story of the youth excited universal 
interest, both in England and on the adjacent conti- 
nent. He was not yet twenty years of age, and in 
person and manners he was handsome and fascinat- 
ing. He " threw himself on the gallantry, and ap- 
pealed to the chivalry, of the Irish nation,'' we are 
told, and the chieftains, from dislike to Henry VII., 
as had been the case with Lambert Simnel, rallied to 
his support as one man. 

But ere he could make use of their hearty proffers 
of aid he received overtures from the French king, 
who deemed it a shrewd stroke of statecraft to have 
at his court a rival to Henry VII., as a menace to him 
in certain negotiations then pending. The French 
Court hailed him as the true heir of England's 
throne, and he was loaded with honors and presents. 

But in the course of a few months Charles of 
France and Henry of England patched up a peace, 
and the claimant, being cast adrift by his patron, 



128 Who Was He? 

made his way to the Duchess of Burgundy, his puta- 
tive aunt. This noble dame recognized the youth as 
her nephew, espoused his claim, and her example was 
followed by those Englishmen resident in Flanders. 

The old Yorkist party at home sent over an envoy 
to investigate him and his claims, who reported "that 
he was the true and lawful prince, the White Rose of 
England." King Henry also sent out secret spies, 
who, on the contrary, asserted that the young man 
was an impostor, and through their intrigues many 
noble adherents of the White Rose were, on one pre- 
text or another, assassinated or put to death. 

These latter outrages impelled the party of Perky n 
Warbeck to decisive action. A descent was made upon 
England, a landing being effected near Deal, with 
a few followers. But these were speedily dispersed 
by Henry's men-at-arms, and the captives, to the 
number of one hundred and sixty, were hanged on 
posts all around the realm, u to serve as sea-marks for 
any more Flemings who might wish to come over." 

By a treaty concluded about this time with Philip 
of Burgundy, the duke promised Henry that he 
would compel the duchess to drive Perkyn out of 
her dominions. So the wanderer next took refuge 
in Ireland — then, as now, the land of the disaffected 



From Crown to Kitchen. 129 

and the Achilles' Heel of England. But, having no 
money, he could raise no friends. He next carried 
his case to Scotland, and with such address and win- 
sorneness that James IV., the brave but unhappy 
Scottish monarch, espoused his cause, heart and soul, 
and gave him his cousin, Lady Catherine Gordon, a 
daughter of the Earl of Huntley, as "his wedded wife. 

An armed expedition across the Border was speed- 
ily planned and executed, but this demonstration in 
favor of the pretender was attended by disaster, and 
met with no good result. Henry VII., who was 
more of a diplomatist than a fighter, secured the 
friendship of James IV. with the hand of his daugh- 
ter, Margaret Tudor, and once more Perkyn Warbeck 
became a friendless outcast. 

An opportune rising, however, of the men of Corn- 
wall encouraged Perkyn to try his fortunes in the 
west of England. He landed with a small force in 
Whitsand Bay, and, making his way inland, gathered 
adherents at every mile's march, attacked Exeter, was 
repulsed, and was finally confronted by the king's 
army at Taunton. But the half-armed and ill-disci- 
plined rabble could not stand an hour before the 
trained bowmen who fought under the royal stand- 
ard, and Perkyn, foreseeing defeat, rode off at night, 
9 



130 Who Was Hk? 

and never drew rein till he reached Beaulieu, in the 
heart of the New Forest. Being at last captured, he 
made a free confession of his imposture, admitting 
that he was the son of a merchant of Tournay, named 
Warbeck. At first his imprisonment was merely 
nominal, but being detected in a plot to escape, he 
was formally tried, condemned, and hung at Tyburn 
in 1499. 

The story of Perkyn Warbeck must ever remain, 
says the Rev. James White, one of the mysterious 
incidents by which every now and then the prosaic 
monotony of history is relieved. Lambert Simnel 
and Perkyn Warbeck are generally set down as pre- 
tenders, but was there no basis of fact for their 
imposture ? As has been more than once remarked, 
there is much to be said in favor of Perkyn War- 
beck. Some have even conjectured that he was a 
natural son of Richard III., and in Francis Peek's 
Desiderata Curiosa, published in 1779, there is a 
remarkable account of a Richard Plantagenet who 
died at Eastwell on December 22, 1550, at the age of 
more than eighty. He was a laborer on the estate of 
Sir Thomas Moyle, and was treated with great indul- 
gence by that gentleman. The story goes that " Sir 
Thomas noticed that in this man's vacant hours, 



Fkom Crown to Kitchen. 131 

when he left off working, he took from his pocket a 
book and occupied himself in reading. One day he 
came upon him unexpectedly, and seizing the book 
found it to be Latin. Sir Thomas discovered in him 
a Latin scholar, and this led to conversation, and, 
by-and-by, to the quiet telling of a strange story : 
He remembered that he had boarded, until ho 
was quite a youth, with a Latin scholar, or school- 
master ; that a gentleman came to see him and 
his guardian about every three months, paying all 
charges, and taking care that the lad wanted for 
nothing; but that one day he came and took him 
away, carrying him to a fine, great house, of which he 
remembered the large and stately rooms, in one of 
which the gentleman left him alone, when there came 
to him another gentleman very richly dressed — it 
will be remembered by our readers that Richard was 
very careful about his dress — and he was adorned 
with a star and rich garter; this gentleman talked 
very kindly to him, gave him mone # y, then called for 
the gentleman who had brought him there and who 
took him back again to his old guardian. 

"Not long after this the same gentleman came 
again, and told him that he was to take him a long 
journey. He provided him with horse and accouter- 



132 Who AVas He? 

ments, and they rode on until they came to Leicester- 
shire, and went to Bosworth Field, and straight on to 
the tent of Richard, the king, who proved to be the 
person whom he had seen in the great house, and who 
now embraced him very tenderly, and told him that 
he was his son ; ' But, child,' said he, ' to-morrow I 
must tight for my crown, and be you sure that if I 
lose it I shall lose my life, too ; but I hope to preserve 
both.' Then lie pointed the lad to a place where he 
was to lie out of danger. ' And when I have gained 
the victory,' he said, ' come to me, and I will own you 
for mine ; but if I should lose the battle you will 
have to shift for yourself, but take care to let no 
one know that 1 am your father, for no mercy will 
l)e shown to any one related to me.' Then the king 
put into his hand a purse of gold, and dismissed him. 
The boy followed the king's directions. We know 
how the battle turned. ' There were probably no indi- 
cations either in the caparisonings of the horse or in 
hie own attire to lead to suspicion. He fled, but suc- 
ceeded in selling the horse and parting with his 
clothes for plainer apparel, and, that he might sustain 
himself by honest labor, bound himself apprentice to 
a bricklayer. t In the midst of such lowly occupation 
he still sustained the reserve of a gentleman, and cul- 



From. Crown to Kitchen. loo 

tivated his taste for scholarly books. He was far 
advanced in life when Sir Thomas met him, who cer- 
tainly treated him as no impostor, but, offering to 
take him into his house and keep hirn there, the old 
man begged of him rather to build for him a little 
house in the park. i There,' said he, * by your good 
leave I will live and die.' " 

This modest request was granted, and there the 
mysterious individual lived until his death, concern- 
ing which the parish register of Eastwell contains the 
following entry : 

"Richard Plantagenet was buried the 22d day of 
December, 1550." 

The cabin in which he died long remained an ob- 
ject of curiosity to travelers, and the Earl of Win- 
chelsea, on his accession to the estate, refused to sanc- 
tion its removal, saying he would as soon have razed 
Eastwell Place itself. 

This, then', is the enigma concerning Richard IV., 
but whether this boy was legitimate or not will never 
be known. It has been thought highly probable that 
he was, and that Richard III. was hoping for the 
time to arrive when, delivered from his enemies, he 
might proclaim the boy as his rightful successor. 

Were those who concocted the impostures of Lam- 



134 



Who Was He? 



bert Siinnel and Perkyn Warbeck (if impostor the 
last named really was) aware of the existence of this 
unacknowledged son of Richard, and did they hope, 
eventually, to palm them off on the people as such "i 

Those who are fond of such speculations, or of 
weaving curious fancies, or of having such w T oven for 
them, will find ample scope for their imagination in 
the trio of tales told above. 




IV. 

THE FOUNDLING OF NUREMBERG. 



THE 

FOUNDLING OF NUREMBERG. 




HE sufferings of the young and help- 
less appeal directly to the sym- 
pathies of the most stoical, while 
the picture of a child of tender 
years in pain or distress cannot 
fail to arouse the liveliest pity in the 
bosoms of the compassionate. 

A little more than half a century ago 
the civilized world was shocked at the 
discovery of one of the crudest crimes that ever dis- 
graced humanity, the victim of which had been kept 
in a narrow and dimly-lighted dungeon, separated 
from all communication with his kind from baby- 
hood, robbed of his childhood and boyhood and of 
the care of his natural guardians, until, at the age of 
seventeen, he was cast adrift on the common high- 
way, helpless as an infant, unable to talk or to walk, 



138 Who Was He? 

Lis mind a blank, Lis faculties undeveloped, and Lis 
body a torment. Scarcely Lad tliis youth been re- 
stored to the companionship of mankind, and partially 
taught and civilized — the progress of his mental and 
moral education being watched with intense interest 
by the physician and the physiologist, by the minister 
and the moralist — than an attack upon his life was 
made by persons unknown. He recovered from this 
assault, but a second attempt to murder him, made 
some three years later, was only too successful. 

All efforts to discover the authors of these vil- 
lainies failed, and the youth bade farewell to the 
world as mysteriously and as tragically as he had 
entered it. Needless to say that these events aroused 
widespread wonder. Great pains were taken to rend 
the veil of darkness enshrouding the foul transaction, 
but without avail, and in all the capitals of Europe 
men asked each other, Who was he ? The query has 
never yet been answered, and the crime has never 
yet been brought home to its perpetrators. 

In the city of Nuremberg, between four and five 
o'clock on the afternoon of Whit-Monday, May 26, 
1828, a citizen who resided in the Unschlitt Place, 
near the lonely Haller Gate, was standing at his door 
enjoying the cool of the evening. A short distance 



The Foundling of Nuremberg. 139 

away, jnst within the barrier, lie noticed a youth, 
clad in peasant's clothes, who, with a shambling and 
staggering gait, was endeavoring to move forward, 
but who appeared to be unable to stand erect or to 
control the motions of his body. 

The citizen approached the stranger, who, with an 
appealing look, handed him a letter addressed, " To 
his Honor, the Captain of the Fourth Squadron 
of the Cavalry Regiment, Nuremberg." As the 
captain lived not far from the Haller Gate the 
citizen undertook to lead the strange lad thither. The 
boy walked, or rather painfully stumbled along, when 
unsupported, w T ith hands thrust out before him, sway- 
ing from side to side, and lifting his feet wholly 
from the ground like a toddling infant. 

On the way to the residence of Captain W., who 
at that time commanded the fourth squadron of the 
Sixth Regiment of the Chevaux-legers, the citizen 
made several efforts to learn whence he came,* his 

* It has been put on record that, in answer to this query, the boy- 
replied, "From Regensburg." It would seem, however, that his 
companion must have mistakenly supposed that some of the nearly 
unintelligible sounds uttered by the stranger were the name of that 
city. It is certain that at that time the words, "From Regensburg," 
were not in his vocabulary. 



140 Who Was He* 

name, and how he came to be so helpless. But he 
soon found that his questions were entirely unintel- 
ligible to the lad. To all interrogatories he returned 
answer in a jargon of w T ords : 

"Ae sechtene mocht ih waeh ne, wiemei Yotta 
waehn is ;" or, " Woas nicht ;" or " Reuta wahn, wie 
mei Yotta wahn is;" or " Iioani wissa." 

These nearly unintelligible phrases comprised his 
sole vocabulary, and they were delivered in a groan- 
ing, guttural tone of voice, more like the whining of 
an animal than the speech of a human being. 

Arrived at the house of Captain W., the unknown 
staggered to the door, and to the servant who an- 
swered the summons presented his letter, with the 
words : 

" Ae sechtene mocht ih waehn, wie mei Yotta 
waehn is." 

Again he was asked what he wanted, whence he 
came, who he was, etc., but he appeared to compre- 
hend none of these questions, and in reply only 
moaned out his " Woas nicht." 

The officer to whom the note was addressed being 
from home, and the lad appearing to be so fatigued 
that he could hardly stand, as the domestic expressed 
it, he was conducted to the stable, where he imme- 



The Foundling of Nuremberg. 141 

diately curled himself up on the straw and fell asleep. 
As he seemed to be suffering from hunger and thirst 
a piece of meat was handed to him, but scarcely had 
it touched his lips when his face became convulsed 
with horror, and he violently spat it out. The same 
disgust was manifested at a glass of beer. A slice of 
bread and a goblet of fresh water he consumed eager- 
ly and with every sign of relish. 

The children stood around him in silent wonder. 
His language consisted of tears, moans, and meaning- 
less sounds, while with gestures of pain he pointed to 
his feet. It is not to be wondered at that the family 
set him down as a harmless savage. 

A dozen hours after his arrival Captain W. arrived 
home, and immediately went to the stable to look at 
the strange being who had been so mysteriously di- 
rected to his house, and of whose antics the children 
told such strange tales. The boy was still sleeping, 
and all efforts to arouse him were for a long time 
fruitless. He was shaken, pinched, rolled over and 
over, stood on his feet, and shouted at, but still he 
slept on. At length, we are told, "after many troub- 
lesome and painful experiments upon the sleeper's 
capacity of feeling," he slowly opened his eyes, 
awoke, gazed intently at the gay colors and gold 



142 Who Was He 3 

braid of the captain's uniform, and then groaned out, 

with tearful eves : 

" Keuta wahn, wie mei Yotta wahn is."* 

Could any thing be more puzzling or ridiculous ? 

Eecourse was next had to the letter which the boy 

had brought. It ran as follows : 

" From a place near the Bavarian frontier which shall be name- 
less, 1828. 

" High and Well-born Captain : 

"I send yon a boy who wishes faithfully to serve 
his king. This boy was left in my house the 7th 
day of October, 1812 ; and I am myself a poor day- 
laborer, who have also ten children, and have enough 
to do to maintain my own family. The mother of 
the child only put him in my house for the sake of 
having him brought up. But I have never been able 
to discover who his mother is, nor have I ever given 
information to the provincial court that such a child 
was placed in my house. I thought I ought to re- 
ceive him as my son. I have given him a Christian 
education, and since 1812 I have never suffered him 
to take a single step out of my house. So that no 
one knows where he was brought up. Nor does he 

* ; * I would be a rider, or trooper, as my father was." 



The Foundling of Nuremberg. 143 

know either the name of my house or where it is. You 
may ask him, but he cannot tell you. I have already 
taught him to read and write, and he writes my 
handwriting exactly as I do. And when we asked 
him what he would be he said he would be one of 
the Chev'aux-legers, as his father was. If he had had 
parents different from what he has he would have 
become a learned lad. If you show him any thing 
he learns it immediately. I have only showed him 
the way to Neumark, whence he was to go to you. 
I told him that when he had once become a soldier I 
should come to take him home or I should lose my 
head. Good Mr. Captain, you need not try him ; he 
does not know the place where I am. I. took him 
away in the middle of the night, and he knows not 
the way home. 

" I am your most obedient servant. I do not sign 
my name, for I might be punished. He has not a 
kreutzer of money, because I have none myself. If 
you do not keep him you may get rid of him or let 
him be scrambled for." 

This remarkable "lying letter" was written in 
German characters, but the style and orthog- 
raphy were evidently disguised so as to pass for 



144 Who Was He? 

those of some ignorant peasant. But with it, in the 
same hand, but in Latin, was inclosed the following 
paper : 

" The child is already baptized. You must give 
him a surname yourself. You must educate the 
child. His father was one of the Chevaux-legers. 
When he is seventeen years old send him to Nurem- 
berg to the Sixth Chevaux-leger Regiment, for there 
his father also was. I ask for his education till he is 
seventeen years old. He was born the 30th of April, 
1812. I am a poor girl and cannot support him. 
His father is dead." 

These documents shed no light on the matter ; on 
the contrary, they rather deepened the mystery. 
Captain W. knew nothing of the stranger, nor could 
he gather any clue to his past history from the fore- 
going papers. The assertion that his father had been 
a member of the regiment it was impossible to either 
verify or disprove. As nothing could be ascertained 
by questioning the chief performer in this strange 
case but the interminable " Woas nicht," or " Reuta 
walm," etc., he was turned over to the police, and to 
them was confided the task of discovering the stran- 
ger's identity. 

On arriving at the police office the boy was shown 



The Foundling of Nuremberg. 145 

into the guard-room and into the presence of several 
of the town magistrates, soldiers, police officers, etc. 
The simple routine questions : 

" What is jour name ? 

" What is your business ? 

" Whence came you ? 

" For what purpose are you here ? 

" Where is your passport ? " 
met with no other response than : 

" Hoam w r eissa ! " u Woas nicht!" or "Reutawahn, 
wei mei Yotta wahn is !" 

If w r as afterward learned that to these syllables he 
attached no meaning. They had been taught him as 
we teach a parrot, and he uttered them indiscrim- 
inately as expressive of all his sensations, whether of 
pain, grief, joy, or terror. 

The police could make nothing of him. He ap- 
peared to possess no more intelligence than a dog or 
a horse. The objects and persons surrounding him 
appeared to arouse neither emotion nor confusion. 
He stared about him, but apparently the things he 
saw excited no thought, and, as a bystander said, " he 
evinced as much perception as a turnip." Some pres- 
ent even doubted whether he were not a clever im- 
postor, so difficult did. they find it to. believe that .ao 
10 



1±6 Who Was He? 

much vacuity could be contained in a single human 
being. 

This suspicion, unfounded as it afterward proved 
to be, received apparent confirmation from an unex- 
pected source. As a last resort an officer handed the 
boy a pen and paper, motioning that he should write. 
An expression of placid pleasure spread over his 
face, and not at all awkwardly he took the pen be- 
tween his fingers and wrote in a good plain hand the 

name 

Kaspar Hauser. 

Then he was told to add the name of the place 
whence he came, but laying down the pen he only 
groaned out the interminable " Reuta wiihn," and 
" Woas nicht/' 

Here was a mystery, indeed. His tears and his 
plaintive gestures and his helpless demeanor touched 
the hearts of all present. A soldier brought him a 
slice of meat and a glass of beer, but as before he 
refused both with evident disgust, and would accept 
nothing but plain bread and water. Another gave 
liiin a piece of money. This he accepted with de- 
light, toyed with it, cried, " Ross ! ross!" (horse, 
horse), and seemed by his gestures to be trying to 
hang the coin around the neck of a horse. " His 



The Foundling or Nuremberg. 147 

whole conduct and demeanor," says Yon Feuerbach, 
" seemed to be that of a child scarcely two or three 
years old with the body of a young man." 

As it was clear that the police could make nothing 
of this strange case, for the present, at least, Kaspar 
was handed over to the care of a porter, who con- 
ducted him to a chamber in the tower of the Vestner 
Gate. On the way thither he fell down several 
times, and on reaching his room sank down imme- 
diately in sound slumber. 

A word here as to the personal appearance, dress, 
etc., of Kaspar Ha user (for by this name he came to 
be known, though it was doubtless not his own) at 
this time may be of interest. Writing in 1831, dur- 
ing the lifetime of the lad, Yon Feuerbach has given 
us the following vivid portraiture : 

"Kaspar Hauser was, when he appeared at Nu- 
remberg, four feet nine inches in height, and from 
sixteen to seventeen years old. His chin and lips 
were very thinly covered with down ; the so-called 
wisdom teeth were yet wanting, nor did they make 
their appearance before the year 1831. His light 
brown hair, which was very fine, and curled in ring- 
lets, was cut according to the fashion of peasants. 
The structure of his body, which was stout and broad- 



US Who Was He? 

shouldered, showed perfect symmetry without any 
visible defect. Plis skin was fine and very fair ; his 
complexion was not florid, but neither was it of a 
sickly hue ; his limbs were delicately built ; his small 
hands were beautifully formed, and his feet, which 
showed no marks of ever before having been con- 
fined or pressed by a shoe, were equally so. The 
soles of his feet, which were without any horny skin, 
were as soft as the palms of his hands, and they were 
covered all over with blood blisters, the marks of 
which were some months later still visible. Both his 
arms showed the marks of inoculation, and on his 
right arm a wound, still covered with a fresh scab, 
was observable, which, as Kaspar afterward related, 
was occasioned by a blow given him with a stick or a 
piece of wood by the man ' with whom he had al- 
ways been,' because he had made rather too much 
noise. His face was at that time very vulgar; when 
in a state of tranquillity it was almost without any 
expression, and its lower features, being somewhat 
prominent, gave him a brutish appearance. The 
staring look of his blue but clear and bright eyes 
had also an expression of brutish obtuseness. The 
formation of his face altered in a few months almost 
entirely, his countenance gained expression and ani- 



The Foundling of Nuremberg. 149 

mation, the prominent lower features of his face re- 
ceded m<5re and more, and his earlier physiognomy 
could scarcely any longer be recognized. His weep- 
ing was at first only an ugly contortion of his mouth, 
but if any thing pleasant affected his mind a lovely, 
smiling, heart-winning sweetness diffused over all his 
features — the irresistible charm that lies concealed in 
the joy of an innocent child. He scarcely at all 
knew how to use his hands and fingers. He 
stretched out his fingers stiff and straight and far 
asunder, with the exception of his first finger and 
thumb, whose tips he commonly held together so as 
to form a circle. Where others applied but a few 
finders he used his whole hand in the most uncouth 
and awkward manner imaginable. His gait, like that 
of an infant making its first essays in leading-strings, 
was, properly speaking, not a walk, but rather a wad- 
dling, tottering groping of the way, a painful me- 
dium between the motion of falling and the endeavor 
to stand upright. In attempting to walk, instead of 
first treading firmly on his heel, he placed his heels 
and the balls of his feet at once to the ground, and, 
raising both feet simultaneously, with an inclination 
of the upper part of his body, he stumbled slowly 
and heavily forward with outstretched arms, which he 



150 Who Was He J 

seemed to use as balancing poles. The slightest im- 
pediment in his way caused him often, in his little 
chamber, to fall flat on the floor. For a long time 
after his arrival he could not go up or down stairs 
without assistance. And even now it is still impossi- 
ble for him to stand on one foot and to raise or bend 
or to stretch the other without falling down." 

From the peculiar formation of his knee-joints it 
would appear that the place in which he had been 
confined had been so narrow and so short that Kas- 
par had been unable to lie at full length. His com- 
mon posture was sitting bolt upright on the floor, his 
back against the wall, and his thigh and leg forming 
a right angle with his body — a most difficult posture 
for one not accustomed to it, as the reader may prove 
for himself. 

When first found he wore upon his head a round, 
coarse, felt hat, lined with yellow silk, and bound 
with red leather, inside of which was pasted a picture 
of the city of Munchen, nearly illegible. A much- 
worn pair of high-heeled boots, shod with iron tips 
and heavy nails, and much too large, and from which 
his toes protruded, were on his feet. Around his 
throat was knotted a black silk handkerchief. He 
wore pantaloons, shaped like riding-gaiters, made of 



The Foundling of Nuremberg. 151 

fine gray cloth and lined inside, which seemed to 
have belonged to some well-to-do peasant, forester, or 
groom. Over a coarse shirt and a faded red waist- 
coat he wore a short jacket, which was declared by a 
tailor to have been made by cutting off the tails of a 
frock-coat, the alterations having been made by a 
hand unfamiliar with tailoring. A white handker- 
chief striped with red, and marked in red witii the 
initials K. H., completed his wearing apparel. 

In his pockets were found some blue and white 
figured rags, a key of German make, a paper of gold 
dust, a small rosary, and a number of pious Catholic 
tracts, some of them printed at Allottingen, Burghau- 
sen, Salzburg, and Prague. The title of only one of 
these is worth reproducing here — " The Art of Re- 
gaining Lost Time and Years Misspent " — because of 
the supposed scoffing allusion therein to the life led 
hitherto by this unfortunate boy. 

None of the foregoing articles aided in casting the 
faintest ray of light upon the black mystery of his 
origin. Indeed, very early in the history of the case, 
and while public opinion was divided upon the ques- 
tion of Kaspar Hawser being an impostor, some of his 
clothing was destroyed, with no thought of the possi- 
ble clues which might have been furnished thereby. 



152 Who Was He? 

It may be proper, for the better understanding of 
the strange story of Kaspar Hauser, to introduce here 
some account of his former life. At a later period, 
when he had been taught to read and write and 
express himself connectedly, he composed a written 
memoir, which he affirmed to be true before a court 
of inquiry held in 1829. The narrative contained 
therein was substantially as follows, though we con- 
dense it somewhat, and may be found in the account 
published by M. von Feuerbach : 

" He neither knows who he is nor wmere his home 
is. It was only at Nuremberg that he came into the 
world. Here he first learned that, besides himself 
and ' the man with whom he has always been,' there 
existed other men and other creatures. As long as he 
can recollect he had always lived in a hole (a small, low 
apartment, which he sometimes called a cage), where 
he had always sat upon the ground, with bare feet, 
and clothed only with a shirt and a pair of breeches." 
" This was confirmed," says Yon Feuerbach, " by 
marks upon his body which cannot be mistaken, by 
the singular formation of his knee and knee-hollow, 
and by his peculiar mode of sitting upon the ground 
with his legs extended, which is possible to himself 
alone." Kaspar himself said that " he never, even in 



» The Foundling of Nuremberg. 153 

his sleep, lay with his whole body stretched out, but 
sat, waking or sleeping, with his back supported in an 
erect posture." Some peculiar property of his 1 place 
of rest or some particular contrivance must prob- 
ably have made it necessary for him to remain con- 
stantly in such a position. 

" In his apartment he never heard a sound, whether 
produced by a man, by an animal, or by any thing 
else. He never saw the heavens, nor did there ever 
appear a brightening (daylight) as at Nuremberg. 
He never perceived any difference between day and 
night, and much less did he ever get a sight of the 
beautiful lights in the heavens." From this it is 
inferred that his prison was a dimly lighted dungeon, 
and that even at high noon the place was in twilight. 
" Whenever he awoke from sleep he found a loaf of 
bread and a pitcher of w r ater beside him. Some- 
times this water had a bad taste ; whenever this was 
the case he could no longer keep his eyes open, but 
was compelled to fall asleep, and on these occasions, 
when he afterward awoke, he found that he had a 
clean shirt on, and that his nails had been cut." It 
has been supposed that this water of which Kas- 
par complained was drugged with opium, from 
the following test : After he had been at Nurem- 



154 Who Was He? 

berg some time his physician attempted to admin- 
ister to him a drop of opium in a glass of water. 
He had scarcely wet his lips when he exclaimed : 
" This water is nasty ; it tastes exactly like the water 
I was obliged to drink in my cage." One thing, 
however, is certain from the above — Kaspar was 
always treated with some sort of care. He long re- 
tained a sort of mild regard for " the man with whom 
he had always been," and never desired to have him 
punished. 

Kaspar "never saw the face of the man who 
brought him his meat and drink. In his hole lie 
had two wooden horses and several ribbons. With 
these horses he had always amused himself as long as 
he was awake, and his only occupation was to make 
them run side by side, and to fix or tie the ribbons 
about them in different positions. Thus one day 
had passed as another ; he had never felt the want of 
any thing; he had never been sick and had only 
once felt the sensation of pain. Upon the whole, he 
thought he had been happier far than in the world, 
where he was obliged to suffer so much. 

" How long he had continued to live in this situa- 
tion he knew not, for he had no knowledge of time. 
He knew not when nor how he came there, nor had 



The Foundling of Nuremberg. 155 

he any recollection of ever having been in a different 
situation or in any other than that place. The man 
with whom he had always been never did him any 
harm. But one day, shortly before he was taken 
away — when he had been running his horse too 
hard, and had made too much noise — the man came 
and struck him upon his arm with a stick, 1 ' and this 
caused a wound, the scar of which he bore when he 
arrived at Nuremberg. 

About the same period "the man came into his 
prison, placed a small table over his feet, and spread 
something white upon it, which he now knows to 
have been paper. He then came behind him, took 
hold of his hand, and moved it backward and for- 
ward upon the paper with a thing [a lead pencil] 
which he had stuck between his fingers. Kaspar was 
then ignorant of what it was, but he was mightily 
pleased when he saw the black figures which began 
to appear upon the white paper. When he felt 
that his hand was free, and that the man was gone 
from him, he could never grow tired of drawing these 
figures repeatedly upon the paper. This new-found 
occupation almost made him forget his horses, al- 
though he did not know what the characters signi- 
fied." The man repeated these lessons several times. 



156 Who Was He? 

There would appear to be no reasonable doubt that 
Kaspar Hauser received during his imprisonment 
regular elementary instruction in writing. We have 
seen how he wrote his name at the police office. On 
the following morning, when his keeper came to him 
in the prison, he gave him, in order to amuse him, 
a sheet of paper and a lead pencil. Kaspar seized 
both with avidity, set diligently to work, and never 
ceased till he had covered the four sides of the folio 
sheet with well-formed letters and syllables such as 
school-children have in their copy-books. In the 
last line of one sheet he placed all the letters of the 
alphabet in proper order and in another a row of 
numerals from 1 to 0. Repeated tests proved con- 
clusively that the boy had at that time no idea of the 
power or value of the letters and figures, and that he 
wrote them "down mechanically. 

" Another time," the sworn narrative proceeds, 
" the man came again, lifted him from the place 
where he lay, placed him on his feet, and endeav- 
ored to teach him to stand and to walk. This he 
repeated at different times. The manner in which 
he effected this was as follows: He seized Kaspar 
firmly around the breast from behind, placed his feet 
behind and under Kaspar's feet, and then lifted 



The Foundling of Nuremberg. 157 

them as in stepping forward. Finally, the man 
appeared once again, placed the boy's hands over his 
shoulders, tied them fast, and thus carried him on 
his back out of the prison. He was borne up or 
down a hill, and then all became night ?' — by which 
latter term he meant that he fainted or became in 
some manner unconscious. The journey must have 
continued some days ; " he often lay with his face to 
the ground ; he often ate bread and drank water ; 
and ' the man with whom he had always been ' was at 
great pains to teach him to walk." This man never 
conversed with him, but continually dinned in his 
ears the refrain, " Reuta walm," etc. u The face of 
this personage Kaspar never saw, either on this jour- 
ney or before in prison. Wherever he led him he 
directed him to look down upon the ground and at 
his feet — an injunction which he' always strictly 
obeyed, partly from fear and partly because his 
attention was occupied with his own person and with 
his painful efforts at locomotion." Not long before 
he was found at Nuremberg the man had clothed him 
in the garments which he then wore. 

The putting on of his boots long caused this 
strange youth great pain. We have before alluded to 
the fact that his feet showed clearly that they had 



158 Who Was He? 

been unaccustomed to the pressure of a shoe. He 
said that his jailer used to make him sit on the 
ground, seize him from behind, draw his feet up, 
and then force them into the boots. They then 
proceeded onward, still more painfully and miserably 
than before. Kaspar neither then nor ever before 
perceived any thing of the objects around him ; he 
neither observed nor saw them, and he could not 
therefore tell from what part of the country, in what 
direction, or by which way he came. " All that he 
was conscious of was that the man who had been 
leading him put the letter which he had brought 
with him into his hand, and then vanished, after 
which a citizen observed him and took him to the 
address named therein." 

Such was the moving history of Kaspar Hauser 
prior to his discovery at Nuremberg. As time 
passed the fruitless efforts of the police to discover a 
clue to the dark and horrid enigma gradually les- 
sened and public interest in the case died away for 
want of food to feed upon. But a number of schol- 
arly and humane gentlemen had become interested in 
the phenomenon of a youth of seventeen with a nor- 
mal body and the mind of an infant. Among these 
were Messrs. Daumer and Binder, the tirst a professor 



The Foundling of Nuremberg. l.V.) 

at the university, and who at once interested himself 
in the education of the lad. 

It was soon discovered that the boy was neither an 
idiot nor a madman. On the contrary, so mild, so 
obedient, so sunny tempered was he, that no one 
could be tempted to believe that he came of brutish 
parents or had grown up among such. Writing of 
him at this time, Yon Feuerbach says : 

u He was so entirely destitute of words and concep- 
tions, he was so totally unacquainted with- the most 
common objects and daily occurrences of nature, and 
he showed so great an indifference — nay, such an ab- 
horrence — to all the usual customs, conveniences, and 
necessaries of civilized life, and at the same time he 
evinced such extraordinary peculiarities in all the 
characteristics of his mental, moral, and physical 
existence, as seemed to leave us no other choice than 
either to regard him as the inhabitant of some other 
planet miraculously transferred to the earth, or as 
one who (like the man Plato supposes) had been 
born and bred underground, and who, now that he 
had arrived at the age of maturity, had for the first 
time ascended to the surface of the earth and beheld 
the light of the sun." 

Turn we aside for a moment to refer to a some- 



160 Who Was He? 

what similar case which a few years previously had 
agitated an English community — that known as the 
" Lady of the Haystack." 

" In the year 1776 a young woman suddenly made 
her appearance at the village of Bourton, near Bris- 
tol, and attracted universal attention by the strange- 
ness of her life. Young and beautiful in person and 
graceful in her manners, she nevertheless lived a 
desolate life for four years, without knowing the 
comfort of a bed or the protection of a roof. Her 
place of refuge was a haystack, to which she fled 
with a kind of wild rapture when remonstrated with 
or wdien any attempt w r as made to restrain her ac- 
tions. The ladies of the neighborhood supplied her 
with the necessaries of life, but she would neither 
wear nor, indeed, accept of any finery or ornaments. 
When such things were forced upon her she hung 
them on the bushes, as being unworthy of her at- 
tention. 

" Her exposed manner of life had gradually under- 
mined her health and impaired her beauty before, 
after repeated trials, she was prevailed upon to 
retire under the care of Mr. Henderson, the keeper 
of a private asylum, where she was supported by the 
benevolent Mrs. Hannah More and her sisters. As 



The Foundling of Nuremberg. 161 

her health improved it became more and more evi- 
dent that her intellect was impaired. She spoke 
English with a German accent, but every attempt to 
inquire into her history was baffled either by her 
reticence or her increasing idiocy. A gentleman 
spoke to her in German, when her emotion was so 
great that she turned from him and burst into tears. 

" The circumstances under which she had been 
found, and every slight suggestion that could be 
gathered from repeated conversations with her, were 
published in German and French throughout the 
Continent, but led to no result till the year 1785, 
when a pamphlet appeared in the French language, 
without either name or place which might serve as a 
clue to its authorship, under the title of The Stran- 
ger: a True History. From this pamphlet the fol- 
lowing particulars of a strange story are derived, 
and when we have recited them the reader must 
judge for himself whether the Lady of the Haystack 
and the young lady described in the pamphlet were 
one and the same person. 

" In the year 1768 (the French pamphlet relates) a 
letter was received from a lady at Bordeaux by Count 
Cobenzel, the Austrian minister at Brussels, entreat- 
ing for the writer his advice and assistance, and 
11 



162 Who Was He? 

signed, in very indifferent French, (Mademoiselle) 
La Frulen. Not lon£ afterward the count also re- 
ceived a letter from Prague, signed Count J. AVeis- 
sendorf, in which he was entreated to comply with 
mademoiselle's request, and even to advance her 
money. The letter concluded thus : ' When you shall 
know, sir, who this stranger is, you will be delighted 
to think you have served her, and grateful to those 
who have given you an opportunity of doing so.' 

" A third letter came to the minister's hand from 
Count Dietrichstein, of Vienna, urging a like re- 
quest, but at the same time desiring him to advise 
mademoiselle to be frugal in her expenditure. The 
count replied to the last two letters, but got no re- 
joinder, and in the meantime he continued the cor- 
respondence with Mademoiselle La Frulen at Bor- 
deaux, who finally stated that she could not intrust 
her secret to writing, but that she intended to visit 
the Austrian Netherlands, and would see him person- 
ally. She meantime sent him her portrait, in which 
the count saw nothing more than the features of a 
lovely woman, while Prince Charles of Lorraine de- 
clared that it bore a strong resemblance to the late 
emperor, his brother. 

" The pamphleteer continues the account of the 



The Foundling of Nuremberg. 163 

circumstances which followed with much detail. 
Dispatches from Vienna led to mademoiselle's arrest. 
It appears that while Joseph II. was on his travels in 
Italy the King of Spain had received a letter, pur- 
porting to be written by the emperor, and informing 
him in confidence that his father had left a natural 
daughter, whose history was known only to his sister, 
the Archduchess Marianne, himself, and a few inti- 
mate friends. The King of Spain thought this letter 
so extraordinary that he sent it to the emperor. Its 
authorship was denied, and, as a consequence, Made- 
moiselle La Friilen was arrested and conveyed to 
Brussels. 

"It is as strange as the other particulars of this 
strange story that just before she quitted the French 
dominions a person unknown, in the habit of a cour- 
ier, put a note into her hand at the coach window 
and then retired with the utmost precipitation. The 
officer by whom she was accompanied read the note, 
which contained only these words : ' My dear girl, 
every thing has been done to save you ; keep up 
your spirits, and do not despair.' She afterward de- 
clared that she neither knew the courier nor the 
handwriting. 

" At Brussels, notwithstanding her winning ap- 



164 Who Was He? 

pearance and engaging manners, she was subjected 
to the severest tests. She spoke French with a Ger- 
man accent. Details of her early history were 
extracted from her, which are all related in the 
pamphlet. She had understood that Bohemia was 
the name of the country in which she had been 
brought up, in the care of two ladies, one of whom 
she had been accustomed to call ' mamma,' the other 
Catharine; she had also received instruction from 
an ecclesiastic who frequently visited the house. She 
described certain visits made at distant intervals by a 
handsome gentleman in a hunting suit, beneath whose 
riding-coat she once noticed something red. At one 
time this visitor was expected, but did not come ; 
and he afterward accounted for his absence by ex- 
plaining that he had been ill in consequence of over- 
heating himself in the chase. Prince Charles recol- 
lected that at the time corresponding to this state- 
ment the emperor was actually taken ill on his return 
from hunting. 

" Then came the time when she heard of the 
strange gentleman's death, which corresponded with 
that of the emperor's ; and La Friilen related a long 
story about her removal from Bohemia, and from the 
companionship of the two ladies, by the ecclesiastic. 



The Foundling of Nuremberg. 1G5 

In some particulars of this part of her story she was 
convicted of prevarication ; but then, again, confirm- 
ing circumstances occurred. Unexpectedly seeing a 
portrait of the late emperor she was so affected by it 
that a lono: and serious illness ensued. The result of 
her alleged removal from Bohemia was her settle- 
ment at Bordeaux, where she lived luxuriously, and 
there she most certainly forged letters as a means of 
recommending herself to the Due de Richelieu. 
These acts she did not conceal from her examiners, 
but declared, with all the appearance of simplicity 
and frankness, that, forsaken as she. was, and certain 
as she felt of her parentage, she did what she had a 
right to do for her own protection. Before any con- 
clusion was come to concerning her, Count Cobenzel 
died, and from what he told a friend there is reason 
to believe he was more than half satisfied of the sub- 
stantial truth of her representations. Mademoiselle 
was then liberated from prison, fifty louis d'or were 
placed in her hands, and she was turned adrift in the 
'wide, wide world.' This w r as in 1769, and if she 
was the same person afterward discovered at Bristol, 
and known as the i Lady of the Haystack,' there is an 
interval of seven years, which it is but little likely 
will ever be accounted for in her sad history. Con- 



16C Who Was He \ 

sidering the condition in which she was found the 
story would probably be one of hopeless wandering 
from place to place until her reason was impaired. 

"The Lady of the Haystack had been named 
Louisa by her benefactors, but there are so many 
coincidences in what little she related, and in her 
manners, with the story of La Friilen, that it is 
almost impossible to resist the conclusion that we are 
reading the history of one and the same person. Two 
scars which marked her person corresponded with 
the description given of the stranger by the pam- 
phleteer, and her beautiful features, with a touch 
of 'the Austrian lip,' further established her iden- 
tity. When sudden remarks were purposely made 
there were proofs given in her manner that she 
had been accustomed to luxurious living and to rid- 
ing in a carriage. Besides this but little remains to 
relate of her. After remaining for a considerable 
time under the care of Mr. Henderson, Louisa was 
removed, as incurable, to Guy's Hospital. As years 
passed on the contraction of her limbs, from exposure 
to cold in the fields and from her subsequent inac- 
tivity, rendered her an object of the strongest com- 
passion. She died rather suddenly, after a long ill- 
ness, on December 18, 1801, and on the 23d her 



The Fou-ndlmjg of Nuremberg. 1G7 

remains were interred in the hospital grounds, at the 
expense of Mrs. More." * 

To return to the Foundling of Nuremberg. 

Kaspar Hauser showed the most remarkable aver- 
sion to even the plainest kinds of food in use among 
the good people with whom his lot was now cast. 
Dry bread and cold water composed the only diet he 
relished, and, without swallowing or even tasting 
them, the sight or smell of tea, coffee, wine, beer, 
pastry, or vegetables was enough to nauseate him. A 
single drop of either of the above-named liquids in a 
glass of water " occasioned him cold sweats or caused 
him to be seized with vomiting or violent headache." 
Even milk, whether boiled or fresh, was distasteful to 
him. His nights began with the set of sun, and his 
days with the rising of that orb. 

His lack of knowledge of the relation of cause and 
effect was ludicrous. The first time he saw a lighted 
candle he was delighted with its brightness, and in- 
nocently put his lingers in the flame to feel of it, 
and was greatly grieved when he burned himself. 
So, also, on being shown his face in a mirror, he 
looked behind it to find the person whom he sup- 
posed was concealed there. Feigned passes were 

* World of Wonders. i 



16S Who Was He? 

made at his chest with a naked sword, and on 
one occasion a pistol was discharged at him, but lie 
seemed to have no idea that bodily harm could come 
to him through these things. In fact, his infantile 
mind had every thing to learn. 

At first, owing, it was supposed, to the fact that 
they had never been used, his senses appeared to be 
dormant. He appeared to take no notice of any 
thing that passed before his eyes, and when his atten- 
tion was directed to certain things, as horses, trees 
or animals, he gazed at them with dull eyes and 
evinced neither astonishment nor curiosity. . 

It was not until the lapse of several days that he no- 
ticed the striking of the town clock and the chiming 
of the bells, and then onl} r by a listening posture and 
a twitching of the face. A few weeks later, when a 
band of music passed by, Kaspar became suddenly 
motionless, and his face took on an ecstatic expres- 
sion ; lon^ after the strains had become inaudible he 
maintained his listening attitude. On another occa- 
sion, at a military parade, he was placed near the 
great regimental drum, and the effect of its booming 
was to send him into convulsions. 

In his queer vocabulary, most of the terms in 
which he seemed to have coined himself, he had 



The Foundling of Nuremberg. 169 

only two words to distinguish all living things. 
Every thing human, whether man or woman, boy or 
girl, he called " bua ;" every animal he met, whether 
quadruped or biped, fur or feather, he named "ross" 
(horse). If these last were white he manifested de- 
light ; if black or brown he showed signs of aversion 
or fear, even going so far as to run away from a 
black hen as fast as his clumsy feet could carry him. 

The one idea which tilled his narrow mind was 
horses, particularly wooden horses. The word "ross" 
was more frequently on his lips than any other, and 
whenever any glittering trifle was given him he would 
cry, "Ross! ross!" and motion as though he would 
hang it around the neck of some animal. He was 
daily conducted to the guard-room of the police 
office, and in a few days became domesticated there. 
His frequent repetition of this word, and his babyish 
ways, prompted one of the officers to bring him a 
wooden horse for a plaything. Kaspar, usually so 
stolid and undemonstrative, when he saw this toy 
w T ent wild with delight and acted as though he had 
found an old and long-lost friend — as indeed he had. 
He immediately squatted on the floor, stroked and 
patted the insensible image by his side, and essayed 
to hang around its neck all the glittering gew-gaws 



1T0 Who Was Hk? 

of which he was possessed. " For liours together," 
said one of the soldiers, in a declaration made before 
a magistrate, " Kaspar sat playing with his horse be- 
side the stove, without attending in the least to any, 
thing that passed around him." 

Through the kindness of some of his. many visitors 
he was soon supplied with a number of horses, and 
whenever he was at home these were his constant 
companions and playmates. lie never suffered them 
to leave his side, sleeping or waking, as was ascer- 
tained by a concealed opening in his door, through 
which his actions were observed. 

" Every day, every hour, resembled the other in 
this, that all of them were passed by Kaspar sitting 
on the floor by the side of his horses, with his legs 
stretched out before him, and continually employed 
in ornamenting them one way or another with rib- 
bons and strings or with bits of colored paper, some- 
times bedecking them with coins, bells, and spangles, 
and sometimes appearing to be immersed in the 
thought how this decoration might' be varied by 
successively placing these articles in different posi- 
tions. He also often dragged his horses backward 
and forward by his side without changing his place 
or altering his position ; yet this was done silently 



The Foundling or Nuremberg. 171 

and very carefully for fear, as he afterward said, 
that the rolling of the wheels might make a noise 
and he might be beaten for it.'' * 

There were a number of ludicrous incidents con- 
nected with these horses. 

He never, we are told, ate his bread without first 
holding every morsel of it to the mouth of some one 
of his horses ; nor did lie ever drink water without 
first dipping their mouths in it, which he afterward 
carefully wiped off. When his keeper sought to 
make him understand that they could not eat Kaspar 
pointed triumphantly to some crumbs adhering to 
their mouths. 

One of these horses was made of plaster, and con- 
stant wetting with water caused its nose and jaw to 
crumble away, whereat the boy was greatly grieved. 
Having fallen asleep on a rocking-horse he rolled 
over and pinched his finger, so he whined that the 
animal had bitten him. At another time, while he 
was 'rolling one of his horses over the floor, its hind 
feet slipped into a hole and caused it to rear up. 
This so delighted the innocent that he must needs 
show the trick to every visitor thereafter. Once, 
when this horse, in rearing, fell down, he ran to it 

* Von Feuerbaeb. 



172 Who Was He? 

with precipitate tenderness, and showed every mark 
of sorrow that it had hurt itself, and he was quite in- 
consolable when the prison keeper once drove a nail 
into one of his pets. 

Enough has been said to show that in mind Kaspar 
was on a par with the veriest infant, and that his per- 
ceptions of things animate and inanimate were almost 
hopelessly confused. 

Animals and men he distinguished only by their 
form, just as he knew men from women solely by their 
dress. The clothing of the female sex, because of its 
gayer colors, was most attractive to him, and he after- 
ward, on this score, expressed a wish that he could 
become a girl — that is, wear a girl's clothes. That 
boys and girls should grow up to be men and women 
was quite inconceivable to him, and he could only be 
convinced of the fact of his own growth by repeated 
markings on the wall which proved his own very 
rapid increase of stature. 

As to ideas upon religion, right and wrong, he of 
course had none. But it was remarked by all with 
whom he came in contact that his mind was as pure 
as that of a baby, and his demeanor was ever modest 
and retiring.* 

When Kaspar had been a little over a month at 



The Foundling of Nuremberg. 173 

Nuremberg lie came under the notice of Herr Ansel in 
von Feuerbach, president of one of the Bavarian 
Courts of Appeal, to whom the world is indebted for 
a dispassionate and candid history* of this remark- 
able youth. On July 11, 1828, this gentleman went 
to Nuremberg expressly to visit and to study Kaspar 
Hauser. The following is his account of his appear- 
ance, actions, etc., at that time : 

" Kaspar's abode was in the tower at the Yestner 
Gate, where every body was admitted who desired to 
see him. I therefore proceeded thither, in company 
with Colonel D., two ladies and two children, and 
we fortunately arrived at an hour when no other vis- 
itors happened to be present, Kaspar's abode was in 
a small but cleanly and light room, the windows of 
which opened upon an extensive and pleasant pros- 
pect. We found him in his bare feet, clothed, beside 
his shirt, only with a pair of old trousers. The walls 
of the chamber had been decorated by Kaspar, as 
high as he could reach, with sheets of colored pict- 
ures. He stuck them to the wall anew every morn- 
ing with his saliva, and as soon as it became twilight 
he took them dowm again and laid them carefully by 
his side ere he slept. In a corner of a. fixed bench 
* An Account of an Individual Kejrt in a Dimgeon. 1831. 



1 74 Who Was He"! 

which extended around the room was his bed, which 
consisted of a bag of straw, with a pillow and a 
blanket. The whole of the remaining part of the 
bench was covered with a variety of playthings, with 
hundreds of leaden soldiers, wooden dogs, horses and 
other toys, such as are commonly manufactured at 
Nuremberg. These had already begun to occupy 
much of his attention during the day, yet he was at 
no little trouble to gather carefully together all these 
trifles and all their appurtenances every evening, to 
unpack them as soon as he awoke, and to place them 
in a certain order alongside of each other. The be- 
nevolence of the kind inhabitants of Nuremberg had 
also prompted them to present him with various arti- 
cles of wearing apparel, which he kept under his pil- 
low, and displayed to us with a childish pleasure not 
unmixed with a little vanity. Upon the bench there 
lay, mingled with the playthings, several pieces of 
money, by which, however, he set no store. From 
these I took a soiled and worn crown piece and a 
quite new piece of 24- kreutzers, and asked him 
which he liked best, He chose the small shining 
one; said the larger one was ugly, and regarded it 
with a look expressive of aversion. When I endeav- 
ored to make him understand that the larger piece 



The Foundling of ^Nuremberg. 175 

was nevertheless the more valuable of the two, and 
that he could get more pretty things for it than for 
the smaller one, he listened attentively and assumed 
for a moment a thoughtful stare, but at length told 
me frankly that he did not know what I meant. 

u When we entered his apartment he showed noth- 
ing like shyness or timidity ; on the contrary, he met 
us with confidence and seemed to be rejoiced at our 
visit. He first of all noticed the colonel's bright uni- 
form, and he could not cease to admire his bright 
helmet, which glittered with gold ; then the colored 
dresses of the ladies attracted his attention ; as for 
myself, being dressed in a modest black coat, I was 
at first scarcely honored with a single glance. Each 
of us placed himself separately before him and men- 
tioned distinctly his name and title. Whenever any 
person was thus introduced Kaspar went up very 
close to him, regarded him with a sharp, penetrating 
look, noticed every feature — forehead, eyes, nose, 
mouth, chin, etc., successively, with rapid glance, and, 
as it seemed, gathered all the different parts of the 
countenance, which at first he had noted separately 
and piece by piece, into one whole. He then re- 
peated the name of the person as it had been men- 
tioned to him. And then he knew the person, and, 



176 Who Was He? 

as experience afterward proved, lie knew him forever. 
He averted his eyes as much as possible from every 
glare of light, and he most carefully avoided the rays 
of the sun, which directly entered the window. 
When such a ray encountered his eye by accident he 
winked very much, wrinkled his forehead, and showed 
that he suffered pain and annoyance. His eyes were 
much inflamed, and he betrayed in every respect the 
greatest sensibility to the effects of light. 

" Although his face became afterward perfectly 
regular, yet at that time a striking difference was 
perceptible between the left and the right side of it. 
The left side was drawn awry and distorted, and con- 
vulsive spasms passed over it like flashes of lightning. 
By these spasms or twitchings the whole left side of 
his body, and particularly his arm and hand, were 
visibly affected. If any thing was shown to him 
which excited his curiosity, if any word was spoken 
which caught his attention and was unintelligible to 
him, these spasms immediately made their appear- 
ance and were generally succeeded by a kind of ner- 
vous rigidity. He then stood motionless; not a mus- 
cle of his face moved ; his eyes remained wide open 
without winking and assumed a stony stare ; he ap- 
peared like a statue, unable to see, to hear, or to be 



The Foundling of Nuremberg. 1 



* i 



excited to any living movement by external impres- 
sions. This state was observable whenever he w T as 
meditating upon any thing, whenever he was seeking 
the conception corresponding to any new word or 
the word corresponding to any new thing, or when- 
ever he endeavored to connect any thing that was 
unknown to him with something that he knew, in 
order to render the first conceivable to him by means 
of the latter. 

" His enunciation of words which he knew was 
plain and determinate, without hesitation or stam- 
mering. But coherent speech w T as not yet to be ex- 
pected of him, and his poverty of words was equaled 
by lils stock of ideas. It was, therefore, extremely 
difficult to make one's self intelligible to him. 
Scarcely had you uttered a few sentences to him 
which he appeared to understand than you found 
that something was mingled with them which w T as 
foreign to him, and if he wished to understand it his 
spasms immediately returned. In all that he said the 
conjunctions, participles, and adverbs were still al- 
most entirely wanting ; his conjugation embraced lit- 
tle more than the infinitive, and he was most of all de- 
ficient in respect to his syntax, which was in a state 

of miserable confusion. ' Kaspar very well,' 'Kas- 
12 



ITS Who Was He > 

par shall Julius tell,' instead of 'I am very well,' 
and k I shall tell Julius,' were his common modes of 
expressing himself. The pronoun ' I' occurred very 
rarely ; he generally spoke of himself in the third 
person, calling himself Kaspar. In the same manner 
lie also spoke to others in the third person instead of 
the second ; for instance, in speaking to a colonel or a 
lady, instead of saying "you," he would say " colonel" 
or " lady " such an one, using the verb in the third 
person. Thus, also, in speaking to him, if you wished 
him immediately to understand you, you must not 
say " you " to him, but Kaspar. The same word was 
often used by him in different significations, which 
often occasioned ludicrous mistakes. Many words, 
which signify only a particular species, Avould be ap- 
plied by him to the whole genus. Thus, to illustrate, 
he would use the words "hill" or "mountain" as if 
they applied to every protuberance or elevation, and in 
consequence thereof, he once called a corpulent gen- 
tleman, whose name he could not recollect, 'the man 
with *the great mountain.' A lady, the end of whose 
shawl he once saw dragging on the floor, he called 
1 the lady with the beautiful tail.' 

" The curiosity, the thirst for knowledge, the in- 
flexible perseverance with which he fixed his atten- 



The Foundling of Nuremberg. 179 

tion on any thing that he was determined to learn or 
comprehend, surpassed every thing that can be con- 
ceived, and the manner in which they were expressed 
was truly affecting. It has already been stated that 
he no longer employed himself in the day-time with 
his playthings ; his hours throughout the day were 
occupied with drawing, with writing or with other 
instructive employments. Bitterly did he complain 
that the great number of people who visited him left 
him no time to learn any thing. It was very affect- 
ing to hear his oft-repeated lamentation that the peo- 
ple in the world knew so much and that there were 
so many things he had not yet learned. Next to 
writing, drawing was his favorite occupation, for 
which he showed great capacity, joined to an equal 
perseverance. For several days he had undertaken 
the task of copying a lithographic print of the Bur- 
gomaster Binder. A large package of quarto sheets 
had already been filled with the copies which he had 
drawn ; they were arranged in a long series in the 
order in which they had been produced. I exam- 
ined each of them separately. The first attempts 
resembled exactly the pictures drawn by little chil- 
dren, who imagine that they have drawn a face when 
they have scratched upon the paper something meant 



180 Who AVas He? 

to represent an oval figure with a few long and cross 
strokes. Yet in almost every one of the succeeding 
attempts some improvements were distinctly visible, 
so that these lines began more and more to resemble 
a human countenance, and finally resembled the orig- 
inal, though still in a crude and imperfect manner, 
yet so that their resemblance to it might be recog- 
nized. I expressed my approbation of some of his 
last attempts, but he showed that he was not satisfied, 
and insisted that he should be obliged to draw the 
picture a great many times before it was drawn as it 
ought to be, and then he would make it a present to 
the burgomaster. 

" With his life in the world he appeared to be by 
no means satisfied ; he longed to go back to the man 
with whom he had always been. At home (in his hole), 
he said, he had never suffered so much from headache 
and had never been so much teased as since he was 
in the world. By this he alluded to the unpleasant 
and painful sensations which were occasioned by the 
many new impressions to which he was totally unac- 
customed, and by a great variety of smells which 
were disagreeable to him, etc., as well as to the nu- 
merous visits of those who came to see him from 
curiosity, to their incessant questioning of him, and 



The Foundling of Nuremberg. 181 

to some of their inconsiderate and not very humane 
experiments. He had, it was plain, no fault to find 
with the man with whom he had always been, except 
that he had not yet come to take him back again, 
and that he had never shown him or told him any 
thing of the many beautiful things which were in the 
world. 

"About an hour after we had seen him we met 
him again on the street. We addressed him, and 
when we asked him whether he could recollect our 
names he mentioned without the least hesitation 
the full name of every one of the company, to- 
gether with all our titles, which must nevertheless 
have appeared to him as unintelligible nonsense. 
The physician, Dr. Osterhausen, observed, on a dif- 
ferent occasion, that, when a nosegay had been given 
him, and he had been told the names of all the differ- 
ent flowers of which it was composed, he recognized 
several days after every one of these flowers, and he 
was able to tell the names of each of them. But the 
strength and quickness of his memory decreased 
afterward precisely in proportion as it was enriched 
and as the strain on his mental faculties was increased. 

" His obedience to all those persons who had ac- 
quired authority over him was unconditional and 



1S2 Who Was He? 

boundless. That the burgomaster or Professor Dan- 
mer had said so was to him a reason for doing or 
omitting to do any thing which was final, and totally 
exclusive of all further questions and considerations. 
When once I asked him why he thought himself 
obliged to yield such punctual obedience he replied : 
4 The man with whom I always was taught me that 
I must do as I am bidden.' Yet in his opinion this 
submission to the authority of others referred only to 
what he was to do or not to do, and it had no con- 
nection whatever with his knowing, believing, or 
opining. Before he could acknowledge any thing to 
be certain and true it was necessary that he should 
be convinced either by the intuition of his senses or 
by some reasoning so adapted to his powers of compre- 
hension and to the scanty requirements of his well- 
nigh vacant mind as to appear to him to be striking. 
Whenever it was impossible to reach his understand- 
ing by any of these ways he did not, indeed, contra- 
dict the assertion made, but he would leave the mat- 
ter undecided until, as he used to say, he had learned 
more. I spoke to him, among other things, of the 
impending winter, and I told him that the roofs of 
the houses and all the streets of the city would then 
all be white — as white as the walls of his chamber. 



The Foundling of Nuremberg. ISo 

He said that this would be very pretty, but he 
plainly intimated that he should not believe it before 
he had seen it. The next winter when the first snow- 
fell he expressed great joy that the streets, the trees, 
and the roofs had now been so well painted, and he 
quickly went down into the yard to fetch some of 
the ' white paint ; ' but he soon ran to his preceptor 
with all his fingers stretched out, crying and blubber- 
ing, and bawling out that ; the white paint had burnt 
his hand ' ! 

" A most surprising and inexplicable property of 
this young man was his love of order and cleanliness, 
which he even carried to the extreme of pedantry. 
Of the many hundreds of trifles of which his little 
household consisted each had its appropriate place, 
was properly packed, carefully folded, and symmet- 
rically arranged. Un cleanliness, or whatever he con- 
sidered as such, whether in his own person or in 
others, was an abomination to him. He observed 
almost every grain of dust upon our clothes, and 
when lie once saw a few grains of snuff on my frill 
lie showed them to me," briskly indicating that he 
wished to wipe the offensive particles away." 

Here, then, we have a most entertaining picture of 
the mental and physical peculiarities of this strange 



184: Who Was He? 

boy. That the study of his unfolding mind and the 
development of his body yielded an interest surpass- 
ing for the time being the question of his identity 
can readily be credited. Such an opportunity for 
physiological and psychological investigations had 
never before been afforded men of science, and they 
embraced it with such ardor that before long the 
health of the subject of their studies began to seri- 
ously suffer under the strain to which he was sub- 
jected. This, together with the high-pressure efforts 
at educating him, and the varied influences brought 
to bear upon his immature brain by the interminable 
procession of visitors, resulted at length in an illness 
that for a time threatened serious results. He be- 
came " melancholy, very much dejected and greatly 
enfeebled," says Dr. Osterhausen. 

On July 18, 1829, Kaspar Hauser was removed 
from his abode in the tower and transferred to the 
home-like care and superintendence of the Professor 
Daumier before alluded to, who assumed entire 
charge of his education, and in whose house he was 
shielded from the exciting influences that had come 
so near costing him his life. In this family, consist- 
ing of the professor's mother and sister, Kaspar 
received much of that motherly and womanly care of 



The Foundling of Nuremberg. 185 

which his harsh fate had deprived him hitherto. 
The magistracy of Nuremberg gave notice in the 
public prints that Professor Daumer had been em- 
powered to admit or exclude visitors as he saw fit. 

In the professor's house Kaspar was first treated to 
the luxury of a bed and made the acquaintance of 
the thousand and one refinements which adorn the 
daily life of cultured people. He afterward said that 
" it was only after he slept in a bed that he began to 
have dreams," and at first he would amuse his 
friends by recounting them as real events ! He 
gradually learned to vary his diet, and grew to eat 
meat, when his bodily strength became greatly aug- 
mented, and he increased more than two inches in 
height in a few weeks. His mental activity, how- 
ever, declined in a marked degree. 

There are many curious anecdotes extant respect- 
ing the boy's ludicrous difficulty in distinguishing 
between things animate and inanimate — between rep- 
resentations of things and the things themselves. It 
puzzled him greatly that hewn or painted horses, 
birds, dogs, gilded weather-vanes, etc., remained al- 
ways in the same place and in one attitude ! He 
complained loudly of the uncleanliness of a statue in 
a garden because it did not wash itself! Being taken 



ISO Who Was He? 

to the Church of St. Sebaldus, the sight of the great 
stone crucifix with its dead Christ tilled him with 
anguish and dismay, and "he earnestly entreated 
that the man who was being so dreadfully tormented 
might be taken down." 

At this time, too, any mechanical or natural mo- 
tion which he observed to take place in any thing he 
ascribed to life within the object. Thus, the tossing 
of the limbs of tree in a gale and the quivering of its 
leaves he looked on as the spontaneous action of the 
tree; and when a sheet of paper was wafted oft' the 
table at which he sat by a sudden draught he 
thought the paper had flown away from the table ; 
the balls in a nine-pin alley he supposed ran along of 
their own volition, they "hurt" the other balls or the 
ninepins when they bounded against them, and they 
finally stopped because they were " tired." Professor 
Daumer fought against this belief for a long time 
unsuccessfully. At length the lad became convinced 
"that a humming-top which he had been spinning 
did not move voluntarily only by finding that, after 
frequently winding up the cord, his own arm began 
to hurt him, being thus sensibly convinced that lie 
had himself exerted the power which was expended 



The Foundling of Nuremberg. 1ST 

Kaspar's conceptions respecting the powers and 
capacities of animals were equally laughable. For a 
long time he ascribed to them the same powers as 
men, and thought it was only perversity that made 
them refuse to exercise or develop them. " He was 
angry with a cat for taking its food only with its 
month, without ever using its 'hands' for that pur- 
pose. He wished to teach it to use its paws and sit 
upright. He spoke to it as to a being like himself, 
and expressed great indignation at its unwillingness- 
to attend to what he said and to learn from him. 
On the contrary, he once highly commended the 
obedience of a certain dog. Seeing a gray cat he 
asked why she did not wash herself, that she might 
become white. When he saw oxen lying down on 
the pavement of the street he wondered why they 
did not go home and lie down there. If it was re- 
plied that such things could not be expected from 
animals, because they were unable to act thus, his 
answer was immediately ready : " Then they ought 
to learn. There were so many things which he also 
was obliged to learn. " 

" Still less had he any conception of the origin and 
growth of any of the organic productions of nature. 
He always spoke as if all trees had been stuck into 



188 Who Was He? 

the ground ; as if all leaves and flowers were the work 
of human hands. The first glimmerings of an idea of 
the origin of plants were furnished him by his plant- 
ing, according to the directions of his instructor, a 
few beans, with his own hands, in a flower-pot, and 
by his afterward being made to observe how they 
germinated and produced leaves, as it were, under his 
own eye. But in general he was accustomed to ask, 
respecting almost every production of nature, Who 
made that thing ? 

" Of the beauties of nature he had no perception. 
Nor did nature seem to interest him otherwise than 
by exciting his curiosity and by suggesting the ques- 
tion, Who made such a thing ? When, for the first 
time, he saw a rainbow its view appeared for a few 
moments to give him pleasure. But he soon turned 
away from it, and he seemed to be much more inter- 
ested in the question, Who made it? than in the 
beauty of its appearance." * 

The first occasion on which his attention was directed 
to the starry heavens marked an epoch in his mental 
growth. Hitherto he had gone to bed with the sun, 
but in the month of August, 1829, he was persuaded 
to keep awake, and after darkness had set in Professor 

* Von Feuerbach. 



The Foundling of Nuremberg. ISO 

Daumer took him out of doors and silently pointed 
upward. His wonder and delight passed all bounds. 
It was, he said, the most beautiful sight he had yet 
seen in this world. The different constellations being 
pointed out to him, and the stars in these last of vary- 
ing magnitudes, he fixed them accurately in his mem- 
ory and never afterward forgot their names or their 
locations. He could not sufficiently feast his eyes on 
the sublime spectacle, and was continually running 
out to gaze upon it. He wanted to know who 
" placed all those beautiful candles there, and who 
lighted them and put them out ? " On being in- 
formed, he fell into a reverie ; his head sunk on his 
chest, and his body became motionless. When roused 
he burst into tears, and for the first time manifested 
anger against the man who had kept him in prison, 
because, as he said, he had kept him from all knowl- 
edge of such beautiful things. 

At another time he asked what was meant by the 
terms " mother," " sister," " brother," etc., and w T hen 
these different relationships were explained to him he 
fell into a moody silence. Being asked what was the 
matter he expressed his sorrow at the thought that 
he had neither father, mother, sister, nor brother. 

His friends were amazed to find that, being allowed 



190 Who Was He? 

to mount a spirited horse, lie almost immediately be- 
came an expert rider, extending his excursions on 
horseback far into the suburbs without the least sign 
of fatigue, and this at a time when a walk of a mile or 
two taxed his endurance to the utmost. It was argued 
from this that Kaspar Hauser must have descended 
from a race of horsemen ; and this belief is not unrea- 
sonable when we recall his former passionate fond- 
ness for toy horses. It is a well-known fact that skill 
in exercises or employments at first acquired artificially 
may be, and often is, transmitted throughout succes- 
sive generations, as witness, says Yon Feuerbach, the 
dexterity in swimming peculiar to the South Sea 
Islanders, and the keen woodland craft of the North 
American Indians. 

Kaspar's senses of sight and hearing were phenom- 
enally acute. He could see in the dark better than 
by daylight, and used to laugh at those by whom he 
was surrounded because they would take a candle or 
lamp with them in going up and down stairs at night. 
His long residence in the twilight of his dungeon 
might, and probably would, account for this cat-like 
power. It is on record that his hearing was so keen 
that he could distinguish three persons walking to- 
gether by their step ! But a still greater surprise to 



The Foundling of Nuremberg. l'Jl 

his friends consisted in the acuteness of his sense of 
smell. Kaspar himself said that through this his sen- 
sations were always painful, and his existence rendered 
most uncomfortable. Things that to ordinary mortals 
were entirely odorless had for him a subtle perfume, 
and in corresponding ratio the odor of flowers, to 
most mortals so grateful and delightful, possessed for 
him insufferable stenches which painfully affected his 
nervous system! He could distinguish apple, pear, 
and plum trees from each other at a considerable 
distance by the smell of their leaves. 

The different colorings used in the painting of walls 
and furniture and in the dyeing of cloths, etc., the 
pigments with which he colored his pictures, the pen- 
cil with which he wrote, all things about him, wafted 
odors to his nostrils which were unpleasant or painful 
to him. If a chimney-sweeper walked the streets, 
though at the distance of several paces from him, he 
turned his face shuddering from the smell. The 
scent of an old cheese made him feel unwell, and 
affected him with nausea. The smell of strong 
vinegar, though fully a yard distant, operated so 
powerfully upon his nerves of sight and smell as 
to bring the water into his eyes. When a glass 
of wine was filled at the table, at a considerable dis- 



102 Who Was He? 

tance away from him, he complained of a disagree- 
able smell and of a sensation of heat in his head. The 
smell of fresh meat was to him the most horrible of 
smells. When Professor Daunier, in the autumn of 
1828, walked with Kaspar near to Saint John's 
churchyard, in the vicinity of JSuremburg, the smell of 
the dead bodies, of which, of course, the professor had 
not the slightest perception, affected Kaspar so pow- 
erfully that he was immediately seized with an ague 
and began to shudder. This ague was soon succeeded 
by a feverish heat, which at length broke out into a vio- 
lent perspiration. He afterward said that he had never 
before experienced so great a heat. Animal magnetism 
exhibited itself in the lad in a manner equally surprising. 
The mutations of Kaspar 1 s mind presented fully as 
startling phenomena as the foregoing physical and 
physiological details. " Raised like an animal,'' says 
Yon Feuerbach, "slumbering even while awake, sen- 
sible in the twilight of his narrow dungeon only of 
the crudest wants of animal nature, occupied with 
nothing but the consuming of food and the eternal 
sameness of his wooden horses, the life of his soul 
could be compared only to the life of an oyster, which, 
adhering to its rock, is sensible of nothing but the 
absorption of its food, and perceives only the eternal 



The Foundling of Nuremberg. 193 

uniform dashing of the waves, and in its narrow shell 
finds no room even for the most narrow idea of the 
world without it." As may be imagined, then, the 
labor of instilling into such a mind ideas of God, 
religion, nature, humanity, and the thousand things 
which ordinary children learn by imitation, was a slow 
and tedious process. But, assisted both by his natural 
aptitude and by his intense desire to learn, his prog- 
ress in the first year was phenomenally rapid, and, 
under the kind care of the Professor and his mother 
and sister, Kaspar soon became a rational, well- 
informed being. By the careful attention of these 
same worthy people, too, the boy's health was vastly 
improved. Such was his mental progress that, in the 
summer of 1829, a little more than a year after his en- 
try into Kuremburg, he was able to collect his recol- 
lections of his marvelous career into a well-written me- 
moir. This production so delighted him that, like many 
another young author, he never wearied of telling of 
his performance, and it was soon announced in various 
European journals that the Foundling of Nuremberg 
was writing his life! It has been thought by his 
biographers that it was this announcement that pre- 
cipitated an attack that was doubtless intended to 

abruptly terminate his short but sorrowful career. 
13* 



194 Who Was He. 

The motive for this dastardly act is not far to seek. 
We must bear in mind the probability that the chief 
reason why Kaspar's jailers had found it necessary to 
get rid of him was the fact that he had become a 
dangerous burden whom it was daily becoming more 
and more difficult to conceal. He was no longer an 
infant or a mere boy. lie had increased in stature 
with his years, was nearly a man, was often noisy and 
unruly, so that it had become necessary to beat him 
into submission. The marks of these blows he bore 
when he came to Nureniburijr. What were the 
reasons forbidding his murder when an infant or in 
early childhood it is useless to conjecture. Whatever 
they were, they were weighty enough to preserve his 
life up to the date of his liberation. Doubtless it was 
thought and hoped that, being cast adrift in the 
world, unlearned and unknown, he would speedily lapse 
into obscurity and be forgotten. But this was not to 
be. Kaspar fell into humane hands, and the youth 
whose early years had been spent in a dungeon bade 
fair to become an honor to his rescuers and a respect- 
able and talented member of society. 

With his growth in knowledge, and because of the 
smoldering public interest in his tale being thus per- 
petually fanned into flame, he had become an object 



The Foundling of Ncep:mbeeg. 195 

of clanger to those whose dark and dastardly ends had 
been served by his long confinement. How much he 
remembered, how much he would divulge tj> the 
world, or what might be discovered by his powerful 
friends with his written narrative as a foundation for 
their investigations, these guilty ones could only won- 
der and tremble thereat. From beini>; the Foundling 
of Nuremberg he had become the Child of Europe, 
and a continent rang with his fame and ten thousand 
hearts beat with sympathy for the waif. How differ- 
ent his fate from that intended by those who thought 
themselves secure in the secret of their crime! 

On Saturday, October 15, 1829, Kaspar happened 
to be left alone in the home of Professor Daumer. 
The house then stood in a thinly-peopled quarter, 
surrounded by open fields, and far from any other 
structure. About eleven o'clock he had occasion to 
visit an outhouse, and on his return thence was 
stabbed or struck in the temple with some sharp 
instrument by a man whose features were probably 
masked, and who immediately fled. Kaspar stag- 
gered toward the house, and either fell or stumbled 
down the cellar steps, at the foot of which he was 
found an hour later, insensible from loss of blood. A 
little after noon Miss Daumer was sweeping the hall- 



196 Who Was He? 

way, when she observed on the stairs several drops of 
blood, and bloody footsteps. These marks she traced 
along the passageway to the closet, and there, to her 
horror, found a mass of clotted blood. In great alarm 
she summoned her mother, and together they tracked 
the boy to the cellar, whence he was carefully and 
tenderly removed to his room. 

The blow, said the physicians and other experts, 
was doubtless intended for the boy's throat, but 
he probably " ducked his head " in time, and thus 
escaped a fatal stroke. Beyond the shock and pain, 
confinement to his room for a few days was all the 
inconvenience Kaspar suffered. But for a time he 
was insensible, then he gave a deep groan, slowly 
opened his eyes, and exclaimed : 

" Man ! Man ! — mother ! — tell professor ! — closet ! " 
— after which he was seized with a n't of shivering 
which lasted forty-eight hours. In his wanderings 
he murmured at various times : 

" Man came ! — don't kill me ! — I love all men ! — 
do no me any thing! — Man, I love you too! — don't 
kill— why man kill?" 

Thus the enemies of Kaspar Ilauser added another 
crime to the already brimming measure of their 
iniquity. 



The Foundling of Nuremberg. 197 

By order of the municipal authorities the boy 
was attended by the medical officer of the city and 
constantly guarded by two soldiers. Under the loving 
care of the Daumer family he soon recovered, and 
when strong enough the magistrates caused him 
to be examined concerning the attempt on his 
life. 

Kaspar deposed that while in the shed he heard 
footsteps stealthily treading the passage, and presently 
the head of a " black " man appeared. In an instant 
he received a severe blow on the forehead, which 
felled him to the ground. Then he must have 
fainted, for he did not fully recover his senses till he 
found himself in the cellar. How he got thither he 
could not tell, but supposed that he must have 
crawled there while in a condition of semi-conscious- 
ness, and taken refuge therein, partly from fright and 
partly because of his inability, in his dazed condition, 
to find his way to his room. 

In a very brief while, however, Kaspar's splendid 
constitution triumphed over the shock ; he was soon 
restored to his former health, and was enabled to re- 
sume his studies. At this time it was said of him that 
in the company of others he would never be known 
from other young men, who had been reared in ordi- 



108 Who Was He? 

nary circumstances. His temper was good, and his 
manners suave, modest, and polite. 

Among the privileged visitors while Kaspar was 
under Professor Daumer's care was Lord Stanhope, 
an English nobleman of wealth and generosity, who 
had become intensely interested in the boy, his story, 
and his career. This gentleman offered to assume 
the entire charge and expense of his education. The 
offer was accepted, and, as a first step, Kaspar was 
sent to Anspach, and there placed under the care of 
an accomplished tutor. His career while at Anspach 
fulfilled every expectation, and" in a few months he 
was deemed competent to assume the duties of an 
official appointment, and he was accordingly made 
clerk in the Registrar's Office of the Court of Ap- 
peal. It was Lord Stanhope's idea to by this means 
accustom Kaspar to the ordinary duties of life, and 
in time to take him to England and adopt him as his 
foster son. 

But the deep and diabolical mystery which hung 
over his young life pursued him to his new abode, 
and the benevolent intentions of the philanthropist 
were frustrated. 

At mid-day on December 17, 1833, while the 
youth was returning home from his official duties, he 



The Foundling of Nuremberg. 199 

was accosted by a stranger, who said he was in pos- 
session of important information concerning the birth 
and origin of Kaspar Hauser (though he informed 
him that this was not his rightful name), which he 
would divulge if he would meet him in the park at- 
tached to the castle of Anspach late that afternoon. 

All on tire to possess the priceless secret, Kaspar 
very imprudently kept the appointment without in- 
forming his protectors or his friends of his intention, 
secrecy having been enjoined by his unknown ac- 
quaintance. 

Arrived at the rendezvous, the stranger was at his 
post. Without a word he took Kaspar by the arm, 
and led him aside until they were surrounded by 
trees and bushes, and were absolutely alone. Then, 
in silence, he plunged a dagger in his breast, and was 
gone ! 

Kaspar had only strength to totter to the public 
highway. He was speedily carried to the residence 
of his tutor, gasped out a few indistinct phrases tell- 
ing of the attempt on his life, and fell fainting to the 
floor. The police were summoned, but ere a final 
deposition could be taken, or he could furnish any 
clue to the perpetrator of the outrage, Kaspar Hauser 
was no more. All the resources of the police were 



200 Who Was He? 

set in motion to endeavor to apprehend the mur- 
derer, but without avail. The author of the dual 
crime (for doubtless the same coward hand dealt both 
blows) was never discovered, and the secret preserved 
at the expense of so much iniquity is still masked 
from the eyes of men. 

With regard to the question, Who was he ? as ap- 
plied to Kaspar Hauser, mention has been already 
made of the belief of many, at first, that he was a 
clever impostor. Julius Meyer wrote a book to 
prove this. But we think this view so widely im- 
probable, in view of all the known facts, as to be not 
worth an instant's consideration. To substantiate it 
we must needs credit Kaspar Hauser with a vast 
amount of cunning and deceit — traits utterly wanting 
in his mental and moral make-up. Besides, the ques- 
tion may well be asked, " To whose good ? " 

Others regarded him as a " Wild Boy," several well- 
authenticated instances of such characters being on 
record. In fact, as has been well said, the amount 
" that has been written regarding wild children and 
wild men and women who have been found in civil- 
ized Europe during the last few centuries will 
astound any one who looks into it. A celebrated 
case is the child recorded in the annals of Hesse, in 



The Foundling of Nuremberg. 201 

1341, discovered among wolves, who leaped, ran 
on all fours, and ate like his wolfish friends ; another 
wild boy was found in the woods in another part of 
Germany, in 1314. In this case the child seems to 
have been lost when about three years old. He was 
absolutely wild for three years ; being captured one 
snowy winter. He lived to reach eighty. Perhaps 
the wolves were a piece of embroidery on the part 
of the monkish chronicler, who remembered the 
famous story of Romulus and Remus and the she- 
wolf. Yet it might also be argued the other way ; 
that the Romulus story had a foundation in fact, so 
far as the occasional occurrence of cases in which she- 
wolves, losing their own young, have satisfied the 
maternal instinct with an abandoned human infant. 
We know that cats and other beasts sometimes adopt 
and suckle the young of other animals. The great 
Dutch physician Boerhave used to cite in his lectures 
a live-year-old boy who became absolutely wild in the 
forest, and remained so for sixteen years. When 
caught he was always trying to escape. He ate 
fruits and roots, herbs, and other things that the 
woods afforded, finding them by an exquisite sense of 
smell. He was aware of the coming of the woman 
who guarded him long before she appeared, and 



202 Who Was II si 

could pick her out of a crowd of women exactly as a 
dog scents his master. This delicacy of smell became 
blunted after he accustomed himself to ordinary food. 
The physicists of the seventeenth century were 
greatly excited over an Irish boy of sixteen who had 
lived, apparently always, among half- wild sheep. 
He was completely naked, hairy, and bent for- 
ward, bleated like a sheep, and ate grass and 
hay. iNever quiet a moment, he had wonderful 
health and strength. His tongue seemed grown to 
his gums. The 'bear boy ' of Lithuania was another 
pretext for violent quarrels among the philosophers. 
He had to be taught to walk upright. His hair was 
thick and white, but he was not seriously malformed, 
and finally learned to talk. His first notes were 
growls like those of bears, and the belief was that a 
she-bear wmose cubs had died and whose udders 
were full of milk had adopted him. In the next 
century a wild girl is recorded in Holland, who would 
never speak, though completely tamed, and in the 
Pyrenees two boys. These cases were eagerly exam- 
ined by the famous Jean Jacques Rousseau, who had 
theories to support which went to prove that all the 
evils of the world came from civilization. Linnaeus 
formed a special name for such abnormal specimens 



The Foundling of Nuremberg. 203 

of our race, calling them homo sapiens ferus. In 
1724 a man found a wild boy in Hanover, who after- 
ward went to England, and died there, aged about 
seventy. He could never talk distinctly, and may 
have been merely an idiot who escaped from or was 
abandoned by his parents. The famous girl of Songi, 
in Champagne, appears to have come from the West 
Indies. She made a great sensation by springing up 
from table, jumping out of the window, catching frogs 
with the swiftness of a cat, and bringing them in to 
her friends to eat raw. There are indications that she 
did not lack cleverness, and used the extraordinary 
interest people took in her for her own good. In 
1767 a case is reported in Hungary. Here hunters 
of bears found human footsteps in the snow and 
caught a wild girl in a cave of bears. She refused 
cooked meat, bread, and other human food. These 
cases, and that of the tongue-tied man found near 
Kronstadt, the youth of the woods of Aveyron, 
France, and still others, gave a chance for numerous 
comparisons between such degraded types and ordi- 
nary savages. A hairy dwarf, whose skeleton was 
preserved at "Wilna, was compared by one naturalist 
with the orang-outang." 

But the letters found on the person of our Found- 



204 Who Was He? 

liner, and the civilized clothing he wore, would seem 
to dispose of the wild-boy theory in the case of Kas- 
par Ilauser. 

Professor Daumer considered him to have been a 
son of the Grand-Duke Charles of Baden and of his 
wife Stephanie, " pushed aside in some criminal way 
in order to secure the succession to the children of 
the Grand Duke Charles Frederick and the Countess 
of Iloehberg." But this theory, though substanti- 
ated by an array of corroborative incidents, is little 
more than a mere guess, although it is perhaps the 
most plausible, not to say probable, of all the theories 
offered in solution of the puzzle. After all, as lias 
been well said, this part of the story has compara- 
tively little interest in view of the many curious 
psychological problems presented in the course of the 
boy's education. 

A haze of impenetrable secrecy surrounds the story 
of Kaspar Hauser, from his tottering appearance in 
the streets of Nuremberg down to his tragic taking 
off. by the assassin's dagger. Not until the last great 
day, when the secrets of all hearts shall be laid bare, 
will the true history of the Foundling of Nuremberg 
be known. 



V. 

THE WANDERING JEW. 



THE WANDERING JEW. 




,LSE WHERE in this volume we have 
referred to the Undying Ones. 
In the following pages we pur- 
pose to give some account of the 
nearly related Wanderers, chief 
among whom, completely overshadowing 
all his congeners, towers the mysterious em- 
bodiment of legendary lore whose name heads 
this chapter. For upward of five centuries 
the Wandering Jew w r as regarded by many throughout 
Christendom as a being of flesh and blood, and his 
thrilling tale as veritable history — a belief kept alive 



* Though this weird story differs from the other narratives here 
grouped together in that it rests upon a basis purely legendary and 
mythical, yet the well-attested appearance of a number of personages, 
at various intervals in the Middle Ages, claiming to be the Wander- 
ing Jew has to that extent brought it within the domain of veritable 
history. 



208 Who Was He? 

until so recently as the last century by periodic reap- 
pearances of various individuals — rank impostors — 
claiming to be the hoary wanderer. 

Two things are worthy of note : The ranks of the 
Undying Ones included men of every condition and 
of every clime — saint and sage, priest and poet, sol- 
dier and seer — who, in the popular belief, as a reward 
for their valor or their virtue, were by the All- Father 
rendered superior to the power of death, and rele- 
gated to a slumberous existence somewhere on earth 
till the crack of doom should sound. On the other 
hand, the Wanderers, one and all, were men -and 
women who, for treating the suffering Christ with 
cruelty or contumely, or for blasphemy against God, 
were doomed to stalk restlessly up and down the 
earth, amid its constant changes, themselves alone un- 
changed, until "the last pulsation of recorded time." 

Certain it is, says Baring-Gould, 45 " that the mytliol- 
gies of all peoples teem " witli legends of favored or 
accursed mortals who had reached beyond the term 
of days set to most men. Some had discovered the 
water of life, the fountain of perpetual youth, and 
were ever renewing: their strength. Others had 
dared the power of God, and were therefore sen- 
* Curious Myths of (he Middle Ages. 



The Wandering Jew. 2U1) 

tenced to feel the weight of his displeasure with- 
out tasting the repose of death. John the Divine 
slept at Ephesus, untouched by corruption, with the 
ground heaving over his breast as he breathed, wait- 
ing the summons to come forth and witness against 
Antichrist.* The Seven Sleepers reposed in a cave, 
and centuries glided by as a watch in the night. 
The Monk of Hildesheim, doubting how with God a 
thousand years could be as yesterday, listened to a 
melody of a bird in the greenwood during three 
minutes, and found that in those three minutes three 
centuries had flown. Joseph of Arimathea, in the 
blessed city of S arras, draws perpetual life from the 
San Graal. Merlin sleeps and sighs in an old tree, 
spell bound of Vivien. Paracelsus was said to be 
seated alive, sleeping or napping, in his sepnlcher at 
Strasburg, preserved from death by some of his spe- 
cifics. Charlemagne and Barbarossa wait, crowned and 
armed, in the heart of the mountain till the time comes 
for the release of the Fatherland from despotism. 

* There is an old legend which states that St. John did not continue 

to rest in his grotto, but undertook to make pilgrimages, in one of 

which he asked alms of Edward Confessor, at Westminster, who gave 

the mendicant a gold ring, which was afterward returned to him 

from the East with the saint's benediction. — M. D. Conway. 
14 



210 Wno Was He? 

And, on the other hand, the curse of a deathless life 
has passed on the Wild Huntsman because he desired 
to chase the red deer for evermore ; on the Captain 
of the Phantom Ship because he vowed he would 
double the Cape whether God willed it or not ; on 
the Man in the Moon because he gathered sticks dur- 
ing the Sabbath rest ; on the dancers of Kolbeck be- 
cause they desired to spend eternity in their mad 
gambols." All will recall that our own Hiawatha 
was supposed never to have died — she "sailed into 
the purple sunset," says the legend. 

Let us glance at the origin of the legend of the 
Wandering Jew. For this we must go to the Script- 
ures and to the words of the Master himself. 

In Matthew xvi, 28, we are told: "Verily I say 
unto you, There be some standing here which shall 
not taste of death, till they see the Son of Man com- 
ing in his kingdom." So Mark ix, 1. 

In Luke ix, 26, 27, the coming of the kingdom 
refers to the judgment day, where the same thought 
is expressed as follows : " For whosoever shall be 
ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall the Son 
of man be ashamed, when he shall come in his own 
glory, and in his Father's, and of the holy angels. 
But I tell you of a truth, there be some standing 



The Wandering Jew. 211 

« 

here, which shall not taste of death till they see the 
kingdom of God." 

Again, in John xxi, 21-23: "Peter seeing him 
[the Beloved Disciple] saith to Jesus, Lord, and what 
shall this man do % Jesus saith unto him, If I will 
that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee ? Fol- 
low thou me. Then went this saying abroad among 
the brethren, that that disciple should not die : yet 
Jesus said not unto him, He shall not die ; but, If I 
will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee ? " * 

"There can be no doubt," says Baring-Gould, "m 
the mind of an unprejudiced person, that the words 
of the Lord do imply that some one or more of those 
then living should not taste death till He came again. 
We may not insist on a literal interpretation, but it is 
certainly compatible with the power and attributes of 
the Lord to have fulfilled His words to the letter. 
We are also to remember that mysterious witnesses 
are to appear in the last great eventful days of 

* The legends concerning St. John given by Hippolyte, followed 
by Eusebius and Augustine, and the ordeals he survived — such as 
the drinking of hemlock — were suggestive of the potency of the 
words spoken by Christ, however casually, " Tarry till I come." The 
same formula spoken to the Wandering Jew made him as indestruct- 
ible as " the disciple whom Jesus loved." — M. D. Conway: The Wan- 
dering Jew. 



212 Who Was He? 

• 

earth's history, and bear testimony to the Gospel 
truth before an antichristian world. One of these 
has been often conjectured to be St. John the Evan- 
gelist, and the other has been variously conjectured 
to be Elias, or Enoch, or the Wandering Jew." 

While the tradition that " the disciple whom Jesus 
loved " should not die obtained credence in the 
Christian Church, we are presented, as its corollary, 
with the story of an enemy of the Redeemer sen- 
tenced by divine justice or compelled by remorse to 
ceaseless wanderings until II is second coming. But, 
like many another, this legend appears in diverse 
forms. The earliest extant mention of the story by a 
Christian writer is in the Book of the Chronicles of 
the Abbey of St. Albans — the Ilistoria Major — con- 
tinued by the Benedictine historian, Matthew Paris, 
who died in the year 1259. This account lie claims 
to have received from an Armenian Bishop, to 
whom the Wandering Jew had related his weird 
history. 

He records that in the year 1228 "a certain arch- 
bishop of Armenia Major came on a pilgrimage to 
England to see the relics of the saints and visit the sa- 
cred places in the kingdom, as he had done in others ; 
he also produced letters of recommendation from His 



The Wandering Jew. 213 

Holiness the Pope to the religious men and prelates of 
the churches, in which they were enjoined to receive 
and entertain him with due reverence and honor. 
On his arrival he went to St. Albans, where he was 
received with all respect by the abbot and monks ; 
at this place, being fatigued with his journey, he 
remained some days to rest himself and his follow- 
ers, and a conversation was commenced between him 
and the inhabitants of the convent by means of their 
interpreters, during which he made many inquiries 
concerning the religion and the religious observances 
of this country, and related many strange things con- 
cerning Eastern lands. In due course he was asked 
whether he had ever seen or heard any thing of 
Joseph, a man of whom there was much talk in the 
world, who, when our Lord suffered, was present and 
spoke to him, and who is still alive in evidence of 
the Christian faith. In reply to which a knight in 
his retinue, who was his interpreter, said, speaking in 
French : ' My lord well knows that man, and a little 
before he took his way to the western countries the 
said Joseph sat at the table of my lord the archbish- 
op, in Armenia, and he had often seen and held con- 
verse with him.' He was then asked about what had 
passed between Christ and the same Joseph, to which 



214 Who Was He? 

lie replied : ' At the time of the suffering of Jesus 
Christ He was seized by the Jews and led into the 
Hall of Judgment before Pilate the governor, that IJc 
might be judged by him on the accusation of the 
Jews; and Pilate, finding no cause of adjudging Him 
to death, said to them : Take Him, and judge Him 
according to your law. The shouts of the Jews, 
however, increasing, he at their request released unto 
them Barabbas, and delivered Jesus to them to be 
crucified. When, therefore, the Jews were dragging 
Jesus forth, and had reached the door, Cartaphilus, a 
Roman porter of the hall in Pilate's service, as Jesus 
was going out of the door, impiously struck Him on 
the back with his hand, and said in mockery : ' Go 
quicker, Jesus, why do you linger?' And Jesus, 
looking back on him with a severe countenance, said 
to him : ' I am going, but you will wait till 1 re- 
turn ! ' And, according as our Lord had said, this 
Cartaphilus is still awaiting his return. At the time 
of our Lord's suffering he was thirty years old, and 
when he attains the age of a hundred years he always 
returns to the same age as he was when our Lord 
suffered. After Christ's death, when the Catholic 
faith gained ground, this Cartaphilus was baptized by 
Ananias (who also baptized the Apostle Paul) and 



The Wandering Jew. 215 

was called Joseph, after Joseph of Arimathea. He 
often dwells in both divisions of Armenia and in 
other Eastern countries, passing his time amid the 
bishops and other prelates of the Church ; he is a 
man of holy conversation and religious ; a man of 
few words and circumspect in his behavior, for he 
does not speak at all unless when questioned by the 
bishops and religious men, aad then he tells of the 
events of old times, of the events which occurred at 
the suffering and resurrection of our Lord, and of the 
witnesses of the resurrection, namely, those who rose 
with Christ, and went into the Holy City and ap- 
peared unto men. He also tells of the creed of the 
Apostles, and of their separation and preaching. 
And all this he relates without smiling or levity of 
conversation, as one who is well practiced in sorrow 
and the fear of God, always looking forward with fear 
to the coming of Jesus Christ, lest at the last judg- 
ment he should find Him in anger whom, on His way 
to death, he had provoked to just vengeance. Num- 
bers come to him from different parts of the world 
enjoying his society and conversation, and to them, 
if they are men of authority, he explains all doubts 
on the matters on which he is questioned. He re- 
fuses all gifts that are offered to him, being content 



210 Who Was He \ 

with slight food and clothing. He places his hope of 
salvation on the fact that he sinned through igno- 
ranee, for the Lord, when suffering, prayed for his 
enemies in these words : " Father, forgive them, for 
they know not what they do !'" 

Such is the earliest written form of the legend, told 
with all the circumstantiality one would expect to 
h'nd were the person claiming to be the Wanderer so 
in fact. Another account of this same Armenian 
patriarch, written in 1242, contained in the Rhyming 
Chronicle of Philip Moushes, who subsequently became 
Bishop of Tournay, gives substantially the same story. 

Both in art and in literature the Jew is depicted as 
a man of "handsome and melancholy countenance," 
with snowy hair and beard, of dignified mien, and, 
though often clad only in rags, yet inspiring respect 
by his manner and his weird tale. According to 
some, he. bore in the center of his forehead a blood- 
red cross, a species of Cain-mark, placed there by the 
indelible finger of God, and by this sign the Inquisi- 
tion sought to detect him, but he concealed it by a 
black skull-cap. Again and again, in more than one 
city of Europe, the cry that the Jews were harboring 
the accursed Wanderer served as a pretext for pillag- 
ing their quarters. 



The Wandering Jew. 217 

The Wandering Jew is not heard from again in a 
circumstantial manner for nearly three hundred years. 
In 1505 we catch a glimpse of him in Bohemia, where 
a person claiming to he Cartaphilus assists a poor 
weaver, named Kokot, to reclaim a treasure buried 
sixty years before by the grandfather of Kokot in the 
presence of the Jew. About this time various places 
in the Low Countries were, it was claimed, visited by 
this restless one. A few years later he turns up in the 
East, and is assumed to be Elijah. About this time, too, 
he appears.to one Fadhillah, near the city of El van, un- 
der the name of Zerib Bar Elia. The Arabs having 
captured the place, Fadhillah, a Moslem warrior, at the 
head of three hundred horsemen, encamps in a defile be- 
tween two mountains. At the hour of sunset he falls 
on his knees at his prayers, and is astonished to hear 
every word of his supplication repeated in a loud and 
distinct voice. At first he thought this phenomenon 
was the result of an echo, but at length he cried out : 

" O thou ! whether thou art of the angel ranks, or 
whether thou art of some other order of spirits, it is 
well ; the power of God be with thee. But if thou 
art a man, then let mine eyes light upon thee, that I 
may rejoice in thy presence and society ! " 

The words were scarcely out of his mouth when a 



2 IS Who Was He? 

venerable man stood before him, white with age, car- 
rying a rough staff, and much resembling a holy 
dervish. In answer to Fadhillah's questions as to 
who he was and whence he came, the stranger an- 
swered : 

" Bassi Hadhret Issa, I am here by command of the 
Lord Jesus, who has left me in this world that I may 
live therein until He comes a second time to earth. I 
wait for this Lord, who is the Fountain of Happiness, 
and in obedience to His command I dwell beyond 
yonder mountain." 

Being asked by Fadhillah when the Lord Christ 
would appear, he replied : 

"At the end of the world, at the last judgment." 

Fadhillah, next inquired of the signs heralding the 
approach of that momentous event, " whereupon 
Zerib Bar Elia gave him an account of the general, 
social, and moral dissolution which would be the 
climax of this world's history," saying that "when 
there shall be no difference in sex between men and 
women ; when the blood of innocents shall be shed ; 
when abundance of food shall not lessen its price ; 
when the poor beg alms without finding any thing to 
live on ; when love to man shall be lost ; when the 
holy Scriptures shall be put into songs ; when the 



The Wandering Jew. 219 

temples dedicated to the true God are filled with 
idols — then be sure that the day of judgment is 
near ! " 

The year 1547 brings in its train the next well- 
attested account of the appearance of the Wandering 
Jew and of his mournful tale. The narrative is chiefly 
derived from the learned Dr. Paulus von Eitzen, 
who subsequently became Bishop of Schles'wig. He 
was accustomed to tell how, " when he was young, 
having studied at Wittenberg, he returned home to 
his parents in Hamburg, in the winter of 1547, and 
that on the following Sunday, in church, he ob- 
served a tall man, with his hair haninnof over his 
shoulders, standing barefoot during the sermon over 
against the pulpit, listening with the deepest atten- 
tion to the discourse ; and, whenever the name of 
Jesus was mentioned, bowing himself profoundly and 
humbly, with sighs and beatings of the breast. He 
had no other clothing in the bitter cold of the winter 
except a pair of hose which were in tatters about his 
feet, and a coat with a girdle' which reached to his 
heels ; while his general appearance was that of a man 
of fifty years. And many people, some of high de- 
gree and title, have seen this same man in England, 
France, Italy, Hungary, Persia, Spain, Poland, Mos- 



220 Who Was He? 

cow, Lapland, Sweden, Denmark, Scotland, and other 
places. 

" Every body wondered over the man. Now, after 
the sermon, the said doctor inquired diligently where 
the stranger was to be found, and when he had sought 
him out he inquired of him privately whence he came, 
and how long that winter he had been in the place. 
Thereupon the stranger replied modestly that he was 
a Jew by birth, a native of Jerusalem, by name 
Ahasuerus,* by trade a shoemaker; he had been 
present at the crucifixion of Christ, and had lived 
ever since, traveling through various lands and cities, 
the which he substantiated by accounts he gave; lie 
related also the circumstances of Christ's transference 
from Pilate to Herod, and the final crucifixion, to- 
gether with other details not recorded in the evangel- 
ists and historians ; he gave accounts of the changes 
of governments in many countries, especially of the 
East, through several centuries, and moreover he de- 
tailed the labors and deaths of the holy apostles of 
Christ most minutely. 

"Now, when Dr. Paulus von Eitzen heard this 
with profound astonishment, on account of its incred- 

* For a curious speculation by Moncure D. Conway as to the origin 
of the various appellations of the Wandering Jew. see pp. 230, 231. 



The Wandering Jew. 221 

iblc novelty, he inquired further, in order that he 
might obtain more accurate information. Then the 
man answered that he had lived in Jerusalem at the 
time of the crucifixion of Christ, whom he had re- 
garded as a deceiver of the people and a heretic ; he 
had seen Him with his own eyes, and had done his 
best, along with others, to bring this deceiver, as he 
thought Him, to justice, and to have Him put out of 
the way. When the sentence had been pronounced 
by Pilate, Christ was about to be dragged past his 
house ; then he ran home and called together his 
household to have a look at Christ, and see what sort 
of a person He was. This having been done, he had 
liis little child on his arm, and was standing in his 
doorway to see the concourse go by. 

" As, then, Christ was led past, bowed under the 
weight of the heavy cross, He tried to rest a little, and 
stood still a moment ; but the shoemaker, in zeal and 
rage, and for the sake of obtaining credit among the 
other Jews, drove the Lord Christ forward, and told 
Him to hasten on His way. Jesus, obeying, looked 
at him and said : 

"'I shall stand and rest, but thou shalt go on till 
the last day ! ' 

" At these words the man set down the child, and, 



222 Who Was He? 

unable to remain where he was, followed Christ 
and saw how cruelly He was crucified, how He suf- 
fered, how He died. As soon as this had taken place, 
it came upon him suddenly that he could no more 
return to Jerusalem, nor see again his wife and 
child, but must go forth into foreign lands, one after 
another, like a mournful pilgrim. When, years 
after, he returned to Jerusalem, he found it ruined 
and utterly razed, so that not one stone was left stand- 
ing on another, and he could not recognize former 
localities. 

" He believes that it is God's purpose, in thus 
driving him about in miserable life, and preserving 
him undying, to present him before the Jews at the 
end as a living token, so that the godless and unbe- 
lieving may remember the death of Christ and be 
turned to repentance. For his part he would well 
rejoice were God in heaven to release him from this 
vale of tears. After this conversation, Dr. Paulas 
von Eitzen, along with the rector of the school of 
Hamburg, who was well read in history, and a trav- 
eler, questioned him about events which had taken 
place in the East since the death of Christ, and he 
was able to give them much information on many 
ancient matters ; so that it was impossible not to be 



The Wandering Jew. 223 

convinced of the truth, of his story, and to see that 
what seems impossible with men is, after all, possible 
with God. 

" Since the Jew has had his life extended he has 
become silent and reserved, and only answers direct 
questions. When invited to become any one's guest 
lie eats little, and drinks in great moderation ; then 
hurries on, never remaining long in one place. 
When, at Hamburg, Dantzig, and elsewhere, money 
has been offered him, he never took more than two 
skillings (about ten cents), and at once distributed it 
to the poor, in token that he needed no money, for 
God would provide for him, as he rued the sin he had 
committed in ignorance. 

" During the period of his stay in Hamburg and 
Dantzig he was never seen to laugh. In whatever 
land he traveled he spoke its language, and when he 
spoke Saxon it was like a native. Many people came 
from far and near to see and hear this man, and were 
convinced that the providence of God was exercised 
in this individual in a very remarkable manner. He 
gladly listened to God's word, and heard it spoken of 
always with great gravity and compunction, and he 
ever reverenced with sighs the pronunciation of the 
name of God or of Jesus Christ, and could not en- 



22± Who Was He? 

dure to hear curses ; but whenever he heard any 
one swear by God's death or pains he waxed indig- 
nant, and exclaimed with vehemence and -with 
sighs : 

ik ' Wretched man and miserable creature thus to 
misuse the name of thy Lord and God and His bitter 
suffering and passion! Hadst thou seen, as I have, 
how heavy and bitter were the pangs and wounds 
of thy Lord, endured for me and for thee, thou 
wouldst rather undergo great pain than take His 
sacred name in vain.' 

"Such is the account given to me by Dr. Paulus 
von Eitzen, with many circumstantial proofs, and 
corroborated by certain of my own old acquaintances 
who sa\v this same individual with their own eyes in 
Hamburg. 

"In the year 1575, the Secretary Christopher 
Krause and Master Jacob von Holstein. Legates to 
the Court of Spain, were sent into the Netherlands to 
pay the soldiers serving his majesty in that country. 
They related on their return home to Schleswig, and 
confirmed with solemn oaths, that they had come 
across the same mysterious individual at Madrid, in 
Spain, in appearance, manner of life, habits, clothing, 
just the same as he had appeared at Hamburg. 



The Wandering Jew. 225 

They said that they had spoken with him, and that 
many people of all classes had conversed with him, 
and found him to speak good Spanish. 

" In the year 1599, in December, a trustworthy 
person wrote from Brunswick to Strasburg that the 
same mentioned strange person had been seen alive 
at Vienna, and that he had started for Poland, and 
that he purposed going on to Moscow. This 
Ahasuerus was at Lubeck in 1601 ; also, about the 
same date, in Iieuel, in Livonia, and in Cracow. In 
Moscow he was seen by many and addressed by 
numbers. 

"What thoughtful, God-fearing persons are to 
think of the said person is at their option. God's 
works are wondrous and past finding out, and are 
manifested day by day, only to be revealed in full 
at the last great day of account." 

The foregoing circumstantial narrative* is signed 
and duly attested by Chrysostomus Dudolceus West- 
phalus, and dated at Reuel, August 1, 1613. That a 
person or persons answering the descriptions, and 
giving some such account of himself or themselves, 
w r ere really seen by these witnesses there can be but 

*For this and other extracts the writer is indebted to the works of 

Messrs. F. Baring-Gould and Moncure D. Conway. 
15 



Who Was He? 

little doubt. As much canuot be said for the truth 
of his pretensions. 

The following quaint verses are known as The 
Wandering Jew's Complaint. They have been 
rendered with some variations into many languages, 
and are said to have originated in Flanders at the 
time of the first appearing of the Jew. To the 
frequent flittings and reappearances of this mysteri- 
ous being are we largely indebted for their preserva- 
tion down to our own era : 

"We used to think your story- 
Was but an idle dream; 

But when thus wan and hoary 
And broken down you seem, 

The sight cannot deceive 

And we the tale believe. 

" Are you that man of sorrow 

Of whom our authors write? 
Grief comes \vith every morrow, 

And wretchedness at night. 
0, let us know, are you 
Isaac, the Wandering Jew ? 

" Then he replied : ' Believe me, 

I suffer bitter woe ; 
Incessant travels grieve me, 

No rest 's for me below ; 



The Wandering Jew. 227 

A respite have I never, 
But onward march forever! 

14 'Twas by my rash behavior 

I wrought this fearful scathe. 
As Christ, our Lord and Saviour, 

Was passing to the grave 
His mild request I spurned. 
His gentle pleading scorned. 

44 ' A secret force expelled me 

That instant from my home, 
And since the doom hath held me 

Unceasingly to roam. 
But neither day nor night 
Must check my onward flight. 

14 ' I have no home to hide me, 

No wealth can I display; 
Yet unknown powers provide me 

Five farthings every day. 
This always is my store. 
'Tis never less nor more.' " 

From the beginning of the seventeenth century 
scarcely a decade passes without mention of the reap- 
pearance of the hoary Wanderer. The year 1604 
finds him at Paris, and it would seem as if all 
Europe at that time rang with his fame. Says Ru- 
dolph Botoreus, writing from that city : "I fear lest 



22S Who Was Ue'. 

I be accused of giving ear to old wives' fables if I 
insert in these pages what is reported all over jJiirope 
of the Jew coeval with our Saviour Christ. ... I 
may say that he who appeared not in one century 
only, and in Spain, Italy, and Germany, was also in 
this year seen and recognized as the same individual 
who had appeared in Hamburg, anno 1566. " Of this 
Hamburg visit J. C. Bulenger says : " It was re- 
ported at this time that a Jew of the era of Christ 
was wandering without food and drink, having for a 
thousand and odd years been a vagabond and an out- 
cast, condemned by God to rove because he, of that 
generation of vipers, was the first to cry out for the 
crucifixion of Christ and the release of Barabbas, and 
also because soon after, when Christ, panting under 
the burden of the rood, sought to rest before his 
workshop (lie was a cobbler), the fellow ordered Him 
away with acerbity. Thereupon Christ replied, ' Be- 
cause thou grudgest me such a moment of rest I shall 
enter into my rest, but thou shalt wander restless.' 
At once frantic and agitated, he fled through the 
whole earth, and on the same account to this day he 
journeys through the world." 

The mysterious Jew next shows himself in Naum- 
berg, where he was again noticed in church, attentive 



The Wandering- Jew. 229 

to the sermon, and as at Hamburg he, being ques- 
tioned after the service, told anew his marvelous tale. 
Among the events of the year 1633 is the reappear- 
ance of the Jew at Hamburg. 

In 1640 he turns up at Brussels under a new name. 
Says Baring-Gould : " In the year aforesaid two cit- 
izens, living in the Gerbertstrasse, in Brussels, were 
walking in the Sonian Wood, when they encountered 
an aged man, whose clothes were in tatters and of an 
antiquated appearance. They invited him to go with 
them to a house of refreshment, and he went with 
them, but would not seat himself, remaining standing 
to drink.* When he came before the doors with the 
two burghers he told them a great deal, but they 
were mostly stories of events which had happened 
many hundred years before. Hence the burghers 
gathered that their companion was Isaac Laquedem, 

* The never-halting Jew of some accounts may, according to 
others, obtain occasionally a brief respite. Thus, in Westphalia, the 
belief is, or was, that the Jew may gain a night's repose if there be 
left in a field two harrows with the tines pointing earthward. In 
other sections of Germany he can find rest ;it any place where two 
oaks grow together in such a way as to form a cross. In Oldenburg 
it is said he can find rest from the middle of May to the end of July, 
which is also the time when the Wild Huntsman may find repose. — 
M. D. Conway. 



230 Who Was He? 

the Jew who had refused to permit our blessed Lord 
to rest for a moment on his doorstep, and they left 
him, full of terror." 

In a curious medical work, printed at Frankfort in 
1604, the Jew is referred to by yet another name — 
Buttadaeus. 

Not the least puzzling feature of this weird tale is 
the variety of names under which the personality of 
the ubiquitous Jew is veiled. Mr. Moncure D. Con- 
way attempts to answer the questions : How is it 
that the name Cartaphilus was replaced by Ahasue- 
rus ? How did the door-keeper of the thirteenth 
century become the shoemaker of the sixteenth cen- 
tury legend ? We subjoin his answer, chiefly to 
show the author's ingenuity in this sort of speculative 
reasoning : 

u Mr. Blind, with creditable caution, suggests that 
the name may have been a modification of As-Vidar. 
The god Yidar was, in the Scandinavian mythology, 
the symbol of everlasting force. . . . He makes shoes 
for which the stuff has been gathering for ages. It 
may be remarked that the name Buttadaeus, given to 
the Wandering Jew by Libavius, may possibly refer 
to the boot (A. S. hutte) of the Wanderer, and it may 
have been that deus was added. Whether it meant 



The Wandering Jew. 231 

the ' booted God,' or the man who struck God with 
a boot,* or holder Dieu, to push God, must remain 
doubtful. Cartaphilus is pretty certainly Kapra </>/Aof, 
in allusion to the ' Beloved ' Disciple. Ahasuerus is 
perhaps the Hebrew form of Xerxes, though there is 
nothing in the history of that king to connect him 
with the Wandering Jew. ... If the name Laque- 
dem is written and pronounced in French lakedem, 
and is derived from the Hebrew, it can scarcely be 
any thing else but la-kedem — that is, ' the former 
world,' in which case we must say the use of the 
prefix la is without a parallel in the names of later 
Jews, and therefore the la, the French article, may 
be considered due to a half-learned inventor of 
names." i 

In 1642 the Jew was reported at Leipzig, and on 
Whitsunday, 1658, " about six of the clock, just after 
evensong," he appeared suddenly in Stamford, En- 
gland, and prescribed successfully for a sick man. 

* In the government library at Berne a pair of shoes and a staff 
are preserved as relics, purporting to have been once used by the 
Wandering Jew. The seven nails in the soles of each of the shoes 
were represented as forming a cross, leaving the imprint of that sa- 
cred symbol wherever their wearer trod. [See the extract from 
Eugene Sue, on p. 238.] 



232 Who Was He ? 

<k For many a long day," we are told, . " there was 
war, hot and tierce, among the divines of Stamford as 
to whether the stranger were an angel or a devil." 
In 1644: John Paul Marana, the famous " Turkish 
Spy," then in Paris, and writing to a friend, Ibrahim 
Haly Cheik, in the East, pens what deserves to rank 
as the most realistic portraiture of the Jew on 
record. Marana says that his name was Michob 
Ader, and that he was an officer in the Court .of 
Judgment in Jerusalem when Christ was condemned. 
" He had seen Jesus hang upon the cross ; had often 
been in the company of Mohammed at Annus, id 
Persia ; was in Rome when Nero set fire to the city, 
and stood triumphing on the top of a hill to behold 
the flames ; heard Vespasian lament the destruction 
of Solomon's Temple ; saw Saladin's return from his 
conquests in the East ; was the intimate friend of 
Godfrey de Bouillon, Scanderbeg, Bajazet, and Soli- 
man the Magnificent, and told many remarkable pas- 
sages concerning these famous men whereof our his- 
tories are silent. He knew Tamerlane the Scythian, 
and told me he was so called because he halted on 
one leg. lie pretends also to have been acquainted 
with Scanderbeg, the valiant and fortunate Prince of 
Epirus. He remembers the ancient caliphs of Baby- 



The Wandering Jew. *Soo 

Ion and Egypt, the empire of the Saracens, and the 
wars in the Holy Land. He says he has washed 
himself in the two headsprings of the river Nile, 
which arise in the southern part of Ethiopia. That 
its increase is occasioned by the great rains in Ethio- 
pia, which swell all the rivers that fall into the Nile, 
and cause that vast inundation to discover whose ori- 
gin has so much puzzled philosophy. I tell thee, if 
this man's pretenses be true, he is so full of choice 
memories, and hath been witness to so many grand 
transactions for the space of centuries of years, that 
he may not unfitly be called a Living Chronology, 
the Proton otary of the Christians' Hegira, or princi- 
pal recorder of that which they esteem the last epocha 
of the world's duration. By his looks we would take 
him for a relic of the Old World, or one of the long- 
haired fathers before the flood. To speak modestly, 
he might pass for the younger brother of Time." * 

On July 22, 1721, the Wanderer presented himself 
at the gates of the city of Munich, in Bavaria. But 
prior to this, about the end of the seventeenth century 
or the opening of the eighteenth, "a man calling him- 
self Michob Ader, and claiming to be the Wandering 
Jew, attracted attention in England and was listened 

* Moncurc D. Comvay: 77ie Wandering Jew. 



234 Who Was He? 

to by the ignorant or despised by the educated. He 
contrived to thrust himself into the notice of the 
nobility who, half in jest, half in curiosity, ques- 
tioned him and paid him as they might a juggler. 
He declared that he had been an officer of the San- 
hedrim, and that he had struck Christ as He left the 
Judgment Hall of Pilate. He remembered all the 
Apostles, and described their clothes, their personal 
appearance, and their peculiarities. He spoke many 
languages, claimed the power of healing the sick, and 
asserted that he had traveled nearly all over the world. 
Those who heard him were perplexed by his familiar- 
ity with foreign tongues and places. Oxford and 
Cambridge sent professors to question him and to 
discover the imposition, if any. An English noble- 
man conversed with him in Arabic, and the mysteri- 
ous stranger told his questioner in that language that 
historical works were not to be relied on. And, on 
being asked his opinion of Mohammed, he replied 
that he had been acquainted with the father of the 
prophet, and that he had dwelt at Ormuz. As for 
Mohammed, he believed him to have been a man of 
intelligence ; once when he heard the prophet deny that 
Christ w r as crucified, he answered abruptly by telling 
him that he was a witness to the truth of that event.' , 



The Wandering Jew. 235 

After appearing abruptly at various places in 
Denmark and Sweden he vanished. In the fol- 
lowing century, in the years 1818, 1824, and 1830, 
various personages claiming to be the Wanderer 
appeared in England, and made many converts 
or dupes. It is perhaps needless to* remark that 
these " reappearances " have totally ceased in recent 
times. 

The most remarkable literary production which 
this theme has inspired is Eugene Sue's powerful tale, 
The Wandering Jew, in the prologue of which the 
narrative is so awe-inspiring that we cannot forbear 
quoting therefrom : 

" The Arctic Ocean encircles with a belt of eternal 
ice the desert confines of Siberia and North America 
— the uttermost limits of the Old and New Worlds, 
separated by the narrow channel known as Behring's 
Straits. 

" The last days of September have arrived. 

"The equinox has brought with it darkness and 
northern storms, and night will quickly close the 
short and dismal polar day. The sky, of a dull and 
leaden blue, is faintly lighted by a sun without 
warmth, whose white disc, scarcely seen above the 
horizon, pales before the dazzling brilliancy of the 



236 Who Was He? 

snow that covers, as far as the eye can reach, the 
boundless steppes. 

" To the north this desert is bounded by a rugged 
coast, bristling with huge black rocks. 

" At the base of this Titanic mass lies enchained 
the petrified ocean, whose spell-bound waves appear 
lixed as vast ranges of ice-mountains, their blue peaks 
fading away in the far-off frost-smoke or snow vapor. 

" Between the twin peaks of Cape East, the termi- 
nation of Siberia, the sullen sea is seen to drive tall 
icebergs across a streak of dead green. There lie 
Behring's Straits. 

" Opposite, and towering over the channel, rise the 
granite masses of Cape Prince of Wales, the headland 
of North America. 

" These lonely latitudes do not belong to the habit- 
able world ; for the piercing cold shivers the stones, 
splits the trees, and causes the earth to burst in 
sunder, which, throwing forth showers of icy spangles, 
alone seems capable of enduring this solitude of frost 
and tempest, of famine and death. 

"And yet, strange to say, foot-prints may be traced 
on the snow covering these headlands on either side 
of Behring's Straits. 

" On the American shore the foot-prints are small 



The Wandering Jew. 237 

and light, thus betraying the presence of a woman. 
She has been hastening up the rocky peak whence the 
drifts of Siberia are visible. 

" On the latter ground foot-prints larger and deeper 
betoken the passing of a man. He also was on his 
way to the Straits. 

" It would seem that this man and this woman had 
arrived here from opposite directions in hope of 
catching a glimpse of one another across the arm of 
the- sea dividing the two worlds — the Old and the 
New. 

" More strange still ! The man and the woman have 
crossed the solitudes during a terrific storm. Black 
pines, the growth of centuries, pointing their bent 
heads in different parts of the solitude like crosses in 
a church-yard, have been uprooted, rent, and hurled 
aside by the blasts ! 

" Yet the two travelers face this furious tempest 
which has plucked up trees and pounded the frozen 
masses into splinters with the roar of thunder. 

" They face it without for one single instant devi- 
ating from the straight line hitherto followed by 
them. 

" Who, then, are these two beings who advance thus 
calmly amid the storms and convulsions of nature ? 



238 Who Was He? 

" Is it by chance, or design, or destiny that the 
seven nails in the sole of the man's shoe form a 
cross, thus : 

* * * 



" Every-where he leaves. this impress behind him. 

" On the smooth and polished snow these footmarks 
seem imprinted by a foot of brass on a marble floor. 

"Night without twilight has now succeeded day — 
a night of foreboding gloom. 

" The brilliant reflection of the snow renders the 
white steppes still visible beneath the azure darkness 
of the sky, and the pale stars glimmer on the obscure 
and frozen dome. 

" Solemn silence reigns. 

" But toward the Straits a faint light appears. 

" At first a gentle, bluish light, such as precedes 
moonrise ; it increases in brightness and assumes a 
ruddy hue. 

" Darkness thickens in every other direction ; the 
white wilds of the desert are now scarcely visible 
under the black vault of the firmament. 



The Wandering Jew. 239 

"Strange and confused noises are heard amid this 
obscurity. 

" They sound like the flight of large night-birds — 
now flapping, now heavily skimming over the steppes, 
now descending. 

" But no cry is heard. 

" This silent terror heralds the approach of one 
of those imposing phenomena that are alike the most 
ferocious and the most harmless of nature. An au- 
rora borealis (magnificent sight !) common in the polar 
regions, suddenly bursts forth. 

" A half circle of dazzling whiteness becomes visi- 
ble on the horizon. Immense columns of light stream 
forth from this dazzling center, rising to a great 
height, illuminating earth, sea, and sky. Then a 
brilliant reflection like the blaze of a conflagration 
steals over the snow of the deserts, purples the sum- 
mits of the mountains of ice, and imparts a dark red 
hue to the black rocks of both continents. 

"After attaining this magnificent brilliancy the 
northern lights faded away gradually, and their vivid 
glow was lost in a luminous fog. 

" Just then, by a wondrous mirage, an effect very 
common in high latitudes, the American coast, though 
separated from Siberia by a broad arm of the sea, 



240 Who Was 1 1 k ; 

loomed so close that a bridge might seemingly be 
thrown from one world to the other. 

"Then human forms appeared in the transparent 
azure haze overspreading both forelands. 

" On the Siberian cape a man on his knees stretched 
his arms toward America with an expression of in- 
conceivable despair. 

" On the American promontory a yonng and hand- 
some woman replied to the man's despairing gesture 
by pointing to heaven. 

" For some seconds these two tall figures stood 
out, pale and shadowy, in the farewell gleams of the 
aurora. 

" But the fog thickens, and all is lost in darkness. 

"Whence came the two beings who met thus amid 
polar glaciers, at the extremes of the Old and New- 
Worlds ? Who were the two creatures brought 
near for a moment by a deceitful mirage, but who 
seemed eternally separated ? " 

A glance at some interweavings of the myth of 
this Wanderer may be of interest. " In some Eastern 
lands," says Conway, " Cain has always been regarded 
as a wanderer, still living, and to this day the Bedouin 
recognizes his presence in the hot Khamsin (Cain- 



The Wandering Jew. 241 

wind). For a long time, indeed, Cain was supposed to 
be the Wandering Jew." In the Hartz Mountains, 
the home of the legend of the Wild Huntsman, and 
which is in full force even at the present day, one 
form of the myth has it that the huntsman is a Jew 
who denied to the suffering Christ the boon of quench- 
ing His thirst at a wayside stream, but had brutally 
directed Him to the hoof-print of a horse in which a 
little rainwater had settled, and bade Him moisten His 
lips there. A second version locates the Huntsman 
(the Jew) in a Swabian forest, and makes him the 
possessor of a purse containing a silver groschen 
" which as often as it is expended returns to the 
spender. 1 ' Another local legend identifies the Wan- 
derer with the gypsies, who are popularly believed to 
be suffering from a ban akin to that put upon Ahas- 
uerus because " they refused to shelter the Yirgin and 
Child on. their memorable flight through Egypt." 
In parts of France the howling of a gale around the 
eaves at midnight is said by the peasantry to be 
caused by the passage of the Wandering Jew. A 
Swiss story runs to the effect that on the judgment 
eve the everlasting Jew will stand upon the Mat- 
terberg. 

Among the kindred myths the most curious is that 

' 16 



242 Who Was He? 

of Herodias, the daughter of Herod. The legend 
runs to the effect that she was deeply enamored of 
John the Baptist, and that in revenge for his repul- 
sion of her advances she secured his decapitation. 
But when his gory head was brought in on the 
charger her fierce affection prompted her to press her 
lips to his. Even in death, however, she was scorned 
by the murdered prophet, for a puff of air from the 
still quivering lips sent her spinning through the 
arched entrance to the chamber, and ever since she 
lias been incessantly gyrating in the air, higher than 
earth's highest building, being only suffered to rest 
from the chiming of midnight to chanticleer's shrill 
alarm. For nearly two score centuries she has been 
thus restlessly whirling in mid-air, and can know no 
rest until the judgment trumpet shall sound. 

There is a similar Scandinavian legend entitled the 
Gertrude Bird, which runs as follows : * 

As our Lord Christ and St. Peter yet walked the 
earth they came once to a woman who stood by her 
bread-trough and kneaded dough. She was called 
Gertrude, and had a red cap on. As they had both 
traveled far that day, and were very hungry, the 
Lord Christ asked the woman for a bit of bread. 

* Literature and Romance of Northern Europe, William and Mary Howitt. 



The Wandering Jew. 24:3 

" Yes, that He should have," said she, and took a 
small piece of the dough and rolled it into shape ; 
but immediately it became so large that it filled the 
trough. 

" Nay, that," said the woman, " was too large ; 
that He must not have." 

She now took another piece, but no sooner had she 
kneaded it than it became just as large. " No, that 
He could not have." The third time she took a very, 
very little piece, but that also became as large. 

" Well," said the woman, " I can give you nothing ; 
you must therefore proceed without a taste, for the 
loaf is always too big ! " 

Then was the Lord Christ indignant, and said : 
" Since thou hast so hard a heart that thou wilt not 
give me a morsel of bread, thou slialt as a punish- 
ment be changed into a bird, and seek thy food be- 
tween wood and bark, and shalt have only to drink 
when it rains ! " 

And scarcely had He spoken the words when she 
was changed into a bird, and flew out of the chim- 
ney ; and still to the present day she is seen flying 
about with a red head and a black body, for the soot 
of the chimney has blacked her. She looks and 
pecks continually in the trees for food, and always 



2U Who Was He? 

pipes when it is about to rain, for she is always 
thirsty.* 

Nearly akin to the Wandering Jew is the Wild 
Huntsman — indeed, as we have seen, the legends 
sometimes overlap. This is a very popular and no 
less widely diffused tradition concerning " a strange 
and spectral hunter who appears by night surrounded 
by dogs, and sometimes with a chain of attendants, 
driving on the chase. " Perhaps," says Karl Blind, 
" one of the clearest proofs of the phantom figure of 
the Wandering Jew having been grafted upon that 
of the great wanderer and world hunter, Wodan, is 
to be found in the tale of the Hartz Mountains. 
There it is said that the Huntsman careers i over the 
seven mountain towns every seven years.' The rea- 
son given for his ceaseless wanderings is that he 
would not allow our Lord Jesus Christ to quench His 
thirst at a river nor at a water-trough for cattle, tell- 

* The story of another female wanderer deals with the fair and 
faithless Lilis, Adam's legendary first wife, who, before the creation 
of Eve, dwelt within the bowers of Eden, happy and beloved. She 
revenges herself on Eve, her snpplanter, by bitter and implacable 
hate of all her descendants. Endowed with perpetual youth and 
beauty, she roams the world over in pursuance of her scheme of 
revenge, " strangling children, kidnapping babes, maligning mothers, 
and luring men into crime." 



The Wandering Jew. 2-45 

ing him that lie ought to drink from a horse-pond. 
For this reason the Huntsman must wander about 
for ever, and feed upon horse-flesh. And whoever 
calls out after him when his ghostly chase comes by 
will see the Wild Huntsman turn around, and be 
compelled by him to eat horseflesh too. No allu- 
sion whatever is made in this tale to a Jew, though 
the name of Christ is pressed into it in a way very 
like the Ahasuerus legend. We seem to get here a 
mythic rendering of the struggle between the old 
Germanic faith and the Christian religion. The 
' horse-pond ' and the ' horse-flesh ' are to all appear- 
ances references to our horse-worshiping, horse-sacri- 
ficing, horse-flesh-eating forefathers who came to 
Britain under Hengist and Horsa. To call out after 
the eternal Huntsman entails the danger of being- 
forced by him to eat horse-flesh — that is, to return to 
the old creed. The Holy Supper of the Teutonic 
tribes consisted of horse-flesh and mead. When 
Christianity came in, the eating of horse-flesh w r as 
abolished as a heathen custom.* 

The Flying Dutchman, too, is a wanderer whose 
adventures have been so often portrayed by pen and 
pencil as to need no recital here. 

* The Gentleman s Magazine. July, 1880. 



246 Who Was He? 

Italian folk-lore furnishes ns still another variation 
of the legend of the Jew. The story is called " Mal- 
chus at the Column."' 

"Malchus was the head of the Jews who killed 
our Lord. The Lord pardoned them all, and likewise 
the good thief, but He never pardoned Malchus be- 
cause it was he who gave the Madonna a blow. He 
is confined under a mountain, and condemned to walk 
round a column without resting as long as the world 
lasts. Every time that he w T alks about the column 
he gives it a blow in memory of the blow he gave 
the mother of our Lord. He has walked around the 
column so long that he has sunk into the ground ; 
he is now up to his neck. When he is under, head 
and all, the world will come to an end, and God will 
then send him to the place prepared for him. He 
asks all those who go to see him (for there are such) 
whether children are yet born, and when they say 
Yes, he gives a deep sigh, and resumes his walk, 
saying, 'The time is not yet, for before the world 
comes to an end there will be no children born for 
seven years.'' " * 

That the stories of the Wandering Jew and his 
congeners are pure myths none can now doubt, al- 

* Italian Legends and Ghost Stories. 



The Wandering Jew. 247 

though in former times they were regarded by many 
as sentient beings. With this view of the case, we 
must conclude that those personages who from time 
to time claimed to be the hoary Jew were rank im- 
postors. "Whether the allegory of Ahasuerus, or 
this ever-restless being, is to be understood as a type 
of the antichristian spirit of skepticism, or whether, 
in a more concrete sense, it is meant to typify the 
ever- wandering, homeless, yet still unchanged Jewish 
people, is a question for critics to decide." While 
there have not been wanting expounders who claimed 
for the Jew a real existence, the weight of opinion 
accepts the mythical and allegorical view. Even Mr. 
Baring-Gould, perhaps the most devout and consid- 
erate of all who have written thereon, admits the 
shadowy basis on which the story rests. 



VI 



JUNIUS AND THE JUNIUS QUEST. 



JUNIUS AND THE JUNIUS QUEST. 




HE years 1767-68 are memorable as 
the beginning of a period of 
storm and stress in English po- 
litical affairs. George III. was 
in the twenty-ninth year of his 
extended and eventful reign. The clever 
and courageous but utterly unscrupulous 
John Wilkes was at the zenith of his dear- 
s ly-bought popularity with the people and 
his no less well-deserved disfavor with the king and 
court. In October, 1768, Lord Chatham retired from 
the ministry which he had formed out of very dis- 
cordant materials two years before, to be succeeded 
for a brief term by the Duke of Grafton, a well- 
meaning but unwise and incompetent statesman. 
Almost the first event of the new regime was the 
arrival of a military force in Boston, the initial act in 
a drama out of the throes of which, fifteen years 



252 Who Was He? 

later, a nation was to be born. In the same year 
Captain Cook sailed on his lirst voyage round the 
world, and James Bruce set out on his memorable 
travels for the discovery of the sources of the Egyp- 
tian Father of Waters. On the continent of Europe 
there were " wars and rumors of wars " in which En- 
gland could scarcely escape embroilment. 

At the threshold of this season of ferment, about 
the middle of the year 1767, a new political writer 
arose sun-like above the stormy horizon, whose efful- 
gence marks an epoch in the affairs of England. He 
wielded a trenchant and truculent pen, and possessed 
an evident familiarity with public affairs, coupled 
with brilliant sarcasm, pungent invective, and incis- 
ive wit. These qualities took men of all parties by 
storm. No former English writer, it was said, suc- 
ceeded in at once so completely exasperating and de- 
lighting the English nation. 

The Public Advertiser newspaper was made the 
vehicle for the dissemination of these political epis- 
tles, which were addressed to various persons. The 
identity of their author was concealed under a variety 
of pseudonyms — " Poplicola," " Memnon," " Lucius," 
" Junius,'' " Philo-Junius," " Brutus, " Nemesis," and 
others ; but the celebrity attaching to the entire series 



Junius and the Junius Quest. 253 

centers around the pseudonym of Junius, which was 
appended to the greater number and the more pun- 
gent and powerful of the letters. The same hand is 
now known to have indited many of the others, so 
that the question of the authorship of most of these 
may be considered as substantially settled. 

The first of these famous epistles appeared April 
28, 1767, and the series closed abruptly on May 12, 
1772. As a " Granville " or " Rockingham " Whig 
the polyonomous critic mercilessly assailed the new 
prime minister, Grafton, and his foreign and domes- 
tic policy, and similarly antagonized many features 
of the ministerial programme during the two years 
immediately following the accession of Lord North 
to power. Nor was royalty itself sacred from attack. 
The " divinity that doth hedge a king " offered no 
protection from the well-feathered bolts that flew 
thick and fast from the pen of this incomparable lit- 
erary archer. John Wilkes, in his famous " Num- 
ber 45," five or six years earlier, had the temerity to 
accuse the monarch of uttering falsehood in a speech 
from the throne. While Junius did not proceed to 
such coarse extremes, his utterances were sufficiently 
caustic and rancorous to arouse feelings of bitterest 
hatred in the hearts of the king and the Tories. 



254 Who Was Hk \ 

Could his identity have been unmasked there is lit- 
tle doubt that a worse fate than that of Wilkes would 
have been his. On the other hand, Junius became 
the idol of the popular and thinking heart of 
England. 

No efforts were spared to discover the personality 
'veiled behind the pen-name of Junius. Said Ed- 
mund Burke, in a famous speech in the House of 
Commons : 

" How comes this Junius to have broke through the 
cobwebs of the law, and to rage uncontrolled, unpun- 
ished, through the land ? The myrmidons of the 
court have been long and are still pursuing him in 
vain. They will hot spend their time upon me or 
you. No; they disdain such vermin when the 
mighty boar of the forest, that has broken through 
all their toils, is before them. But what will all 
their efforts avail \ No sooner has he wounded one 
than he lays another dead at his feet. For my part, 
when I saw his attack upon the king, I own my 
blood ran cold. King, Lords, and Commons are but 
the sport of his fury. Were he a member of this 
House what might not be expected from his knowl- 
edge, his firmness, his integrity ! He would be easily 
known by his contempt of all danger, by his penetra- 



Junius and the Junius Quest. 255 

tion, by his vigor. Nothing would escape his vigi- 
lance and activity. Bad ministers could conceal 
nothing from his sagacity, nor could promises nor 
threats cajole him to conceal any thing from the 
public." 

The theme of the Letters of Junius has been briefly 
described as the vindication of popular liberty. The 
key-note of the whole series is pitched in the follow- 
ing passage : " The submission of a free people to 
the executive authority of government is no more 
than a compliance with laws which they themselves 
have enacted." As has been well said by another 
writer on this topic : 

" Every leading political occurrence of the day was 
turned to a vindication of popular liberty. It may 
truly be said that the British Constitution never had 
a bolder champion than Junius, nor in the majority 
of cases a more learned or discriminating advocate. 
The amount of his legal and constitutional knowl- 
edge is extraordinary, especially if, as there is every 
reason to believe, he was not a lawyer. The charac- 
teristics of his style are energy, brevity, impetuosity, 
and the striking employment of metaphor. The 
principal drawback to the enjoyment of such talents 
applied in so good a cause is the writer's rancor and 



256 Who Was He? 

ferocity, and his incessant aspersions on private char- 
acter." 

And in an essay on Junius and his writings, pre- 
fixed to WoodfalPs (1S12) edition of his works, Dr. 
John Mason Good thus speaks of the characteristics 
of these famous letters : 

" The classic purity of their language, the exquisite 
force and perspicuity of their argument, the keen 
severity of their reproach, the extensive information 
they evince, their fearless and decisive tone, and 
above all their stern and steady attachment to the 
purest principles of the Constitution, acquired for 
them, with an almost electric speed, a popularity 
which no series of letters has since possessed, nor, 
perhaps, ever will ; and, what is of far greater con- 
sequence, diffused among the body politic a clearer 
knowledge of their constitutional rights than they 
had ever before attained, and animated them with a 
more determined spirit to maintain them inviolate. 
Enveloped in the cloud of a fictitious name, the 
w T riter of these philippics, unseen himself, beheld 
with secret satisfaction the vast influence of his la- 
bors, and enjoyed, though not always without appre- 
hension, the universal hunt that was made to detect 
him in his disguise. He beheld the people extolling 



Junius and the Junius Quest. 257 

him, the court execrating him, and ministers — and 
more than ministers — trembling beneath the lash of 
his invisible hand," 

In a very brief while all England rang with the 
praise or the execration of the unknown, according 
to the party affiliations of his readers, and the query 
in all men's months was, " Who is Junius ? " Only 
within comparatively recent time lias this interroga- 
tory been answered with reasonable probability of 
correctness. 

As has been said, the period covered by the Letters 
of Junius, and by those generally attributed to him, 
extends from the communication signed " Poplicola," 
dated April 28, 1767, down to the episode of " Nem- 
esis," dated May 12, 1772. The "Letters of Ju- 
nius," properly so named, and fathered by him, num- 
ber in all fifty-nine epistles, from January 21, 1769, 
to January 21, 1772, a period of exactly three years. 
Forty-four bear the signature of " Junius," and fif- 
teen that of " Philo- Junius" (acknowledged by Ju- 
nius as his). The titles of these are : 

Written by Junius : 

To the Duke of Grafton 11 

To the Printer of the Public Advertiser 10 

To Sir William Draper 5 

17 



:58 



Who Was He? 



i. 1 each. 



To Chief- Justice Mansfield 3 

To Edward Weston I 

To Dr. William Blackstone 

On Walpole's Case 

To the Duke of Bedford 

On the Rescue of General Gansel 

On Modestus 

Address to the King 

Retrospect of the Parliamentary Session. . . 

To Lord North 

On the Falkland Islands 

On Privileges of Parliament 

On Parliamentary Resolutions 

To the Rev. Mr. Home 

To the Livery of London 

To Lord Camden 

=44 in all. 
Written by Philo- Junius : 

To the Printer of the Public Advertiser 10 

On Walpblc's Case 1 

On the Spanish Convention 1 

To Modestus 1 

To Zeno 1 

To an Advocate of the Cause of the People. . 1 = 15 in all. 

Those written over the other signatures, to which 
reference has been made, possess internal evidences 
pointing strongly to Junius as their author. 

Almost sphinx-like was the air of cold, haughty, 



Junius and the Junius Quest. 259 

and impenetrable secrecy with which Junius envel- 
oped himself. The only being whom he admitted to 
any thing approaching confidential relations was 
Woodfall. To him Junius wrote frequently, and his 
communications are couched in friendly and amiable 
terms, but always in the feigned Junian hand- 
writing, of which more anon. Perhaps Woodfall 
may have made a shrewd guess at the secret of his 
unknown contributor; it almost certainly was nut 
confided to him. There is a story to the effect that 
the identity of Junius eventually became known to 
the government, and that immediately the Letters 
ceased. George III. is reported to have said : " We 
know who Junius is. lie will write no more." The 
anecdote is probably an apocryphal one, yet it is at 
least a curious coincidence that almost immediately 
after the sudden cessation of the Letters one of the 
very few men in Opposition to the government capa- 
ble of penning such able philippics should have 
been appointed by the ministry to a lucrative and 
magnificent post in India. 

" I am the sole depository of my own secret, and it 
shall perish with me," wrote Junius to Woodfall. It 
is safe to assert that he was in truth, as he said, the 
depository of his own secret. He made no conti- 



260 Who Was He? 

dants, and no one survived him who could throw a 
gleam of radiance in the shape of direct evidence on 
the darkness of the mystery. The testimony, how- 
ever cumulative and conclusive, which many think 
points in a certain direction, is purely circumstantial. 
Doubtless much of the interest excited in the pop- 
ular mind by the Letters of Junius was owing to this 
success with which the identity of the writer was 
concealed. Public curiosity was whetted to the ut- 
most, and they read who never read before. Says 
Dr. Samuel Johnson, in his sonorous style, alluding 
to this feature : lli Junius burst into notice with a 
blaze of impudence which has rarely glared upon the 
world before, and drew the rabble after him as a 
monster makes a show. When he had once provided 
for his safety by impenetrable secrecy he had nothing 
to combat but truth and justice — enemies whom he 
knows to be feeble in the dark. Being then at lib- 
erty to indulge himself in all the immunities of invis- 
ibility,, out of the reach of danger he has been bold, 
out of the reach of shame he has been confident. As 
a rhetorician he has the art of persuading when he 
seconded desire; as a reasoner he has convinced those 
who had no doubt before ; as a moralist he has 
taught that virtue may disgrace ; and as a patriot he 



Junius and the Junius Quest. 2G1 

has gratified the mean by insults on the high. It is 
not by his liveliness of imagery, his pungency of 
periods, or his fertility of allusion, that he detains the 
cits of London or the boors of Middlesex. Of style 
and sentiment they take no cognizance." Clearly 
the " Great Cham " was not among those who were 
dazzled by the Junian " blaze of impudence." 

There is one thing, however, for which the world 
to-day cannot be too thankful to Junius. He 
performed a real service to English journalism. 
Says Mr. Green, in his History of the English Peo- 
ple: "Junius attacked the government in letters 
which, rancorous and unscrupulous as was their tone, 
gave a new power to the literature of the press by 
their clearness and terseness of statement, the finish 
of their style, and the terrible vigor of their in- 
vective." In fact, the virtual collapse of the pros- 
ecutions against Wilkes for his memorable "Num- 
ber 45," and against Junius for his Letter to the 
King, u established the right of the press to criticise 
the conduct, not of ministers or Parliament only, 
but of the sovereign himself, and gave a weight 
to journalism which it had not hitherto possessed." 
The first great English papers sprang into being 
about this time — The Morning Chronicle, The 



202 Who Was He? 

Morning Post, The Morning Herald, and The 
Times. 

It may be of interest to the reader if we reproduce 
here the names, collected by Allibone, of the more 
prominent persons to whom has been ascribed the 
authorship of the Letters of Junius. Well-nigh 
every Englishman of note on the stage of human 
action has been mentioned in connection with them, 
and his " claims" advocated, at some time or other 
during the past eighty years. The list embraces: 
Mr. Sergeant Adair, Colonel Isaac Barre, Hugh Ma- 
caulay Boyd, Edmund Burke, Bishop Butler, Lord 
Camden, Lord Chatham, Lord Chesterfield, M. de 
Lolme, Lord Ashburton, Samuel Dyer, Henry Flood, 
Philip Francis, D.D. (father of the following), Sir 
Philip Francis, Edward Gibbon, Richard Glover,' 
Henry G rattan, William Greatrakes, George Gren- 
ville, James Grenville, William Gerard ("Single- 
Speech '') Hamilton, James Hollis, Sir William 
Jones, John Kent, General Charles Lee, Charles 
Lloyd, Lord Thomas Lyttleton, Laughlin MacLeary, 
the Duke of Portland, Governor Thomas Pownall, 
Sir Robert Rich, John Roberts, Rev. Philip Rosen- 
hagen, Lord George Sackville, Earl Shelburne, Earl 
Temple, John Home Tooke, Horace Walpole, John 



Junius and the Junius Quest. 2G3 

Wilkes, Alexander Wedderburn, James Wilmot, and 
Daniel Wray — no less than forty-two in all — and we 
have only named the more prominent names. 

But out of this lengthy list there are very few who 
really possessed the intellect, the statesmanship, and 
the knowledge of affairs manifested in the Letters of 
Junius. The suggestion of so many names, how- 
ever, all more or less probable, shows how difficult 
was the task of discovering the real name of the hid- 
den writer, and how completely nonplussed were the 
critics. The "claims " of Boyd, Burke, Butler, Dun- 
ning, Dyer, Flood, Lee, Lloyd, Eoberts, Rosenhagen 
and Sackville were laboriously considered and sifted 
by Dr. Good, and for wise and weighty reasons all 
were declared out of the question. Macaulay dis- 
•posed of five of the greatest names in almost as few 
lines. He says : " Lord Lyttleton's claims to the au- 
thorship of Junius are better than those of Burke 
and Barre, and quite as good as those of Lord 
George Sackville or * Single-Speech ' Hamilton." His 
opinion as to the true identity of Junius will appear 
later. The evidence " of places and circumstances, of 
sentiments and opinions, of political connections and 
of handwriting seems decisive" against nearly all 
of those just enumerated. After the lapse of years 



20± Who Was He? 

there remain but four or five names to whom the au- 
thorship of the Letters can be attributed with the faint- 
est show of probability. These names are those of 
Colonel Barre, Lord George Sackville, the Grenvilles, 
and Sir Philip Francis. But the field of inquiry has 
been still further circumscribed, and the first member 
of this trio may be declared out of the race. It is 
now believed by many critics that "either the author- 
ship remains an impenetrable enigma, or that it be- 
longs to one whose name was not mentioned in con- 
nection with it for many years subsequently " to the 
cessation of the Letters — Sir Philip Francis. 

As might be expected, the Junian controversy 
gave birth to a vast literature. From 1779 to our 
own day the battle raged with greater or less viru- 
lence in book and broadside, pamphlet and penny-a- 
liner. Several works emanated from this side the 
Atlantic, and some of the most startling theories 
sprung from the same fertile source. To an Ameri- 
can magazine we are also indebted for a valuable 
contribution to the elucidation of the mystery.* 
Many of the theories advanced were fads which the 
facts were distorted to fit ; others were weighty and 
well-considered arguments in favor of some noted 

* LippincoWs Magazine, Jan., 1870. 



Junius and the Junius Quest. 265 

personage as the author ; yet others were card-castles 
which a breath would cause to collapse. Most of the 
theories, however, end t in impossibilities. But all 
these contributions, wise and unwise, performed a 
certain service : the ground was cleared for action 
when the time came to consider the claims of those 
few who were really worthy of consideration in con- 
nection with the authorship of the famous epistles. 

Those who have most arduously dug and delved 
are sometimes the very first to confess themselves 
furthest from any satisfactory conclusion. Thus, Sir 
N. Harris Nicolas, perhaps the most painstaking of 
the small army of Junius seekers, and who adopted a 
system of posting, in ledger fashion, for many years, 
the debits and credits against and in favor of particu- 
lar persons, arrived, in 1843, at this not over-bright 
result : 

" So far from having any theory of our own on 
Junius's identity, we are as entirely free from bias 
on the subject, and confess ourselves as profoundly 
ignorant of the authorship of those celebrated Letters, 
as if, instead of having for many years constantly 
had the question in our mind, and having read, we 
believe, nearly every thing that has been written on 
the point, we had never bestowed a thought on the 



206 Who Was He? 

matter. We have, indeed, a strong impression that 
Junius was not any one of the numerous persons 
heretofore so confidently brought forward. . . . How- 
ever startling the idea may be to the many pseudo- 
discoverers of Junius on both sides of the Atlantic, 
we found much of the claim of our observations to 
attention in the very fact of our having no Junius of 
our own, and on our disbelief in each of theirs." 

If any one was competent to conduct such an in- 
quiry it was this same Sir N. Harris Nicolas. He 
was an accomplished antiquary, well able to weigh 
documentary and other evidence, and a riian unlikely 
to be carried away by enthusiasm for any particular 
theory. 

Dr. John Mason Good, another eminent Junius 
hunter, thus expressed himself, writing to his friend 
Barker, in 1827, after a decade of devotion to the 
subject : 

" Many years ago I entered at full speed into this 
research, and beat the bush in every direction. At 
that time, however, the claims of Sir Philip Francis 
had not been advanced, at least before the public. 
But had they been brought forward, the arguments 
by which it is obvious they may be met, and many 
of which you have yourself ably handled, would, I 



Junius and the Junius Quest. 207 

think, have succeeded in putting him as completely 
out of the list as all the other competitors appear to 
be whose friends have undertaken to brine: them for- 
ward. The question is nevertheless one of great in- 
terest, as well on the score of national history as of 
literary curiosity. Yet, like many other desiderata, 
I am afraid it is likely to lie beyond the fathoming 
of any line and plummet that will be applied to it in 
our day." 

We do not propose to inflict upon the reader a 
dry bibliography of the Junian literature ; its perusal 
would only afford evidence, where none is needed, of 
the follies and foibles which have dominated many 
otherwise well-balanced and estimable persons. Suf- 
fice it to say that, although the judicious Allibone 
has expressed the opinion that men are hanged every 
year on less evidence than has been adduced in favor 
of more than one of these claimants, the majority of 
the publications on the subject are devoted to the 
support of theories so wild and visionary that the 
wonder is that men capable of. wielding a pen should 
lend themselves to their advocacy. We shall content 
ourselves, therefore, with glancing only at those works 
whose authors devote themselves to considering or 
pushing the claims of the candidates for honors 



208 AVno Was II k: 

already named — the Grenvilles, Colonel Barre, Lord 
Sackville, and Sir Philip Francis ; seeing that all other 
el lies land the investigator, sooner or later, in a blind 
alley. 

A number of books, essays, etc., were written to 
prove that Colonel Isaac Barre was Junius, chief 
among which is the work of Mr. John Britton, who 
contends that Barre was aided by Lord Shelbnrne 
and Mr. Dunning. Conversely, in an article pub- 
lished in the London Morning Herald in 1813, the 
men composing this talented trio were shifted about, 
and the assertion made that Lord Shelburne was 
Junius, and that he was assisted by Barre and 
Dunning! 

Colonel Isaac Barre was an officer in the English 
army, and was born in Dublin in 1726. He served 
in Canada under Wolfe, and was returned to Parlia- 
ment in 1701. In 1765 he won the applause of the 
North American colonists by a spirited speech against 
the iniquitous Stamp Act. This latter event, and his 
subsequent course of action during Lord North's ad- 
ministration, would seem to be among the chief 
grounds on which his claims are based. But " one 
swallow does not make a summer." Britton's work 
has been summarized as " a curious instance of the 



Junius and the Junius Quest. 269 

delusion to which ingenious men may resign them- 
selves when they have a favorite opinion to up- 
hold." 

Lord George Sackville, who afterward becamp Lord 
Germain, is the second of the quintet whose claims 
have alone been thought worthy of serious considera- 
tion. In a w r ork by George Coventry, published in 
1S25, and entitled " A Critical Inquiry Regarding 
the Real Author of the Letters of Junius," they are 
proved (?) to have been written by Lord Sackville. 
This theory was amplified and improved on in an 
American publication emanating from Boston in 
1828. Charles Butler, in his Reminiscences, also 
thinks that Lord Sackville was the author of the 
Junian letters, and that Sir Philip Francis was his 
amanuensis and secretary. Still another change has 
been rung on this pretty combination. Mr. Jaques 
adopts the .theory that D'Oyly was a fellow-clerk 
with Francis in the War Office, and the confidential 
agent between Sackville and Francis. Dr. Good de- 
cidedly rejects the Sackvillian theory. 

As more than one writer has advanced the opinion 
that Francis wrote the Letters for another person, but 
was not himself the author of them, we will repro- 
duce here, though somewhat out of its natural order, 



270 Who Was He? 

a few brief observations of Mr. Tvvistleton which 
completely upset this hypothesis : 

" To make intelligible the precise bearing of the 
handwriting on the authorship, it may be remarked 
that the knowledge of who was the handwriter would 
be conclusive as to who was the author for any one 
who entertains a strong conviction of the truth of 
any one of the four following propositions : 1. That 
the known character of the handwriter forbids the 
supposition of his having submitted during four or 
five years to be the amanuensis of another author. 

2. That Junius, in his Dedication to the English Na- 
tion, would not have volunteered the assertion that 
lie was the sole depository of his own secret if all the 
while he had put himself in the power of another 
person by making use of him as an amanuensis. 

3. That the private Letters of Junius to Woodfall, 
and the corrections in the proof-sheets, bear internal 
marks of having been written, not by an amanuensis, 
but by the author himself. 4. That, independently 
of handwriting, the evidence which points to the 
handwriter as the author is so strong, standing alone, 
that although it may possibly not be conclusive, it 
justifies vehement suspicion, and attains a high de- 
gree of moral probability. Each reader must judge 



Junius and the Junius Quest. £71 

for himself whether one or more of these proposi- 
tions commands his assent. For any one who be- 
lieves in the truth of all the four it would be idle to 
undervalue the strength of moral conviction as to the 
authorship, which must arise from the fact of the 
handwriter having been definitely ascertained. And, 
at the very lowest, if Francis was the handwriter, 
this throws out of competition with him for the 
authorship every individual candidate in regard to 
whom it cannot be shown that he was more compe- 
tent and more likely than Francis to have composed 
the Junian Letters, and that he might possibly have 
made use of Francis as his amanuensis." 

Come we now to the most important of the coterie 
above named, and the only one w r hose " claims" to the 
authorship of the Letters of Junius have stood the 
test of time and controversy, Sir Philip Francis. To 
the consideration of the evidence pointing to this 
personage many voluminous works have been de- 
voted, to say nothing of a vast number of essays, 
reviews, and magazine articles. Incidentally, also, 
the advocates of the claims of others give more or 
less space to the case against Francis. 

But among all the Junian literature the palm for 
scholarship, critical acumen, and painstaking investi- 



272 Who Was He? 

gation must be awarded to the " The Identity of 
Junius with a Distinguished Living Character Estab- 
lished," by Mr. John Taylor, published in London 
in 1816, during the lifetime of Sir Philip Francis, 
and never contradicted, noticed, or refuted by 
him. 

Concerning this work and the evidence presented 
therein Lord Brougham wrote : 

" That it proves Sir Philip to be Junius we will 
not affirm, but this we can safely assert, that it accu- 
mulates such a mass of circumstantial evidence as 
renders it. extremely difficult to believe he is not; 
and that if so many coincidences shall be found to 
have misled in this case, our faith in all conclusions 
drawn from proofs of a similar kind may henceforth 
be shaken." 

To Mr. Taylor belongs the honor of this, the first 
attempt, forty-four years after the cessation of the 
publications in The Public Advertiser, to fix the 
authoiJship on Francis, as it is by all odds the ablest. 
In "A Supplement to Junius Identified" Mr. Taylor 
considers more at length the question of the hand- 
writing of Junius and Francis, and clinches the 
argument he previously put forth. In connection 
with this last most interesting phase of the contro- 



Junius and the Junius Quest. 273 

versy, and of the labors of Messrs. Twistleton and 
Cliabot, we shall have something to say fur- 
ther on. 

Sir Philip Francis first saw the light in 1740, in 
Dublin, which was likewise the place of nativity of 
Colonel Isaac Barre, who was, as we have seen, another 
fetish of the Junius seekers. His father was the Rev. 
Philip Francis, chaplain to Lord Holland, and pre- 
ceptor to Charles James Fox. Dr. Johnson consid- 
ered his translation of Horace the best then extant. 
Young Francis removed to London when about ten 
years of age. He was a clerk in the War Office from 
1763 to 1772, and in 1773 was appointed a member 
of the Supreme Council of Bengal, of which Warren 
Hastings was president. Francis was the leader of 
the faction which bitterly antagonized the measures 
of Hastings. The outcome of this feud was a duel 
between Francis and Hastings, who asserted that the 
former was destitute of feelings of truth and honor, 
in which Francis was seriously wounded. He re- 
turned to England in 1780, entered Parliament in 
1784, and took a leading part in the impeachment 
and trial of his former enemy, Warren Hastings. 
He voted with Fox, and strenuously advocated the 

abolition of the slave-trade. In 1806 he was made a 
18 



27± Who Was He? 

Knight of the Bath, and shortly thereafter retired 
from public life. He died in London in 1S18. 

Of the abilities and character of Sir Philip, Lord 
Macaulay has left on record the following opinion, 
expressed in his essay on the career of Warren 
Hastings : 

" The ablest of the new councilors was, beyond all 
doubt, Philip Francis. His acknowledged composi- 
tions prove that he possessed considerable eloquence 
and information. Several years passed in the public 
offices had formed him to habits of business. His 
enemies have never denied that he possessed a manly 
and fearless spirit; his friends, we are afraid, must 
acknowledge that his estimate of himself was ex- 
travagantly high; that his temper was irritable ; that 
his deportment was often ructe and petulant ; and 
that his hatred was of intense bitterness and lung 
duration." 

When the publication of the J.unian Letters was 
begun Francis had for some years been a clerk in 
the War Office, and this circumstance furnished the 
basis of the argument advanced by Mr. Taylor. 
Many of the letters were penned on War Office paper. 
" So accurate is the knowledge of the business of that 
bureau betrayed by the writer, that the conviction of 



Junius and the Junius Quest. 275 

his having been concerned in that department is irre- 
sistible, nor can any other person in a similar position 
capable of having penned the Letters be pointed out." 
This may be ; yet the reader is immediately prompted 
to inquire whether it was not an extremely daring 
step for the writer of the famous philippics, suppos- 
ing him to have been on the staff at the War Office, 
to have used the official paper of that branch of the 
service, seeing that such a course must inevitably 
direct attention to the mvploy'es thereof ? The hand- 
writing, of course, was feigned, and before the case 
against Sir Philip could be advanced beyond conject- 
ure it was necessary to settle the question whether 
the feigned Junian hand could be identified with his. 
An old love-letter was the means of starting this 
pregnant inquiry, as we shall shortly show. 

Just here the following anecdote may not be out 
of place. It was related to Mr. Twistleton by Mr. W. 
J. Blake, of Danesbury, to whom it was told by his 
father, Mr. William Blake, and deals with the Junian 
signature : 

" After the publication of Junius Identified, Mr. 
William Blake was in a country house with Sir 
Philip Francis, and happened to converse with him 
on the poetry of Lord Byron, to which Sir Philip 



276 Who Was He? 

expressed his aversion. This induced Mr. Blake to 
single out for his perusal the well-known lines in the 
'Giaour,' beginning with 'lie who hath bent him 
o'er the dead.' Francis read them, went to a writing- 
table, seized a piece of paper, wrote down on it a 
string of words which he extracted from those lines, 
ending with ' nothingness ' and ' changeless,' added 
below them the word ' senseless,' and then rapidly 
subscribed his initials between two dashes. On ob- 
serving the signature Mr. Blake said to him, ' Pra}', 
will you allow me to ask you, Sir Philip, do you al- 
ways sign your initials in that manner?' Sir Philip 
merely answered gruffly, 'I know what you mean, sir,' 
and walked away. This took place in or about the 
year 1817, forty-eight years after May 3, 1769, the 
date of the letter in which the signature of his in- 
itials between two dashes first occurs." 

As may be imagined, the labor involved in any 
thing like a thorough test of the Junian and Francis- 
can handwritings was prodigious. At the instance of 
Mr. E. T. B. Twistleton (whose connection with the 
love-letter episode will be narrated later) this investi- 
gation was undertaken and carried to a conclusion by 
Mr. Chabot, the eminent calligraphic expert, who com- 
pared, not only the acknowledged handwriting of Sir 



Junius and the Junius Quest. 277 

Philip Francis, but that of every other notable " claim- 
ant" with the penmanship of Junius. 

It occurred to Mr. Twistleton that if sufficient 
documentary materials were placed at the disposal of 
Mr. Chabot he would be able to give a valuable and 
trustworthy opinion as to whether Sir Philip Francis 
did or did not write the Letters of Junius. Mr. Twis- 
tleton therefore procured from a granddaughter of 
Francis a letter-book containing forty-two original 
private letters written and sent by Francis to his 
brother-in-law and to his wife during the years 
1767-71 inclusive, very nearly the period covered by 
the whole Junian correspondence. From the trust- 
ees of the British Museum access was gained to all 
the original MSS. of the writings of Junius, while 
Mr. Murray allowed the use of the autograph MS. 
of the letters of Junius to Mr. Grenville which were 
in his possession. Mr. Twistleton's instructions to 
Mr. Chabot were " that he should submit the hand- 
writing of Junius to a searching comparison with the 
letters of Sir Philip Francis, and should state profes- 
sionally his opinion in writing whether the letters of 
Francis and the Letters of Junius were or were not 
written by the same hand." 

The results of this inquiry were published by Mr, 



278 Who Was He? . 

Twistleton in a volume of 197 pages quarto, with a 
large number of facsimile plates of specimens from 
Sir Philip's handwriting, that of Junius, and that of 
Lord George Sackville, and must convince the unbi- 
ased reader that, so far as the matter of penmanship 
is concerned, the evidence which proves Francis and 
Junius to have been one is circumstantially complete. 
In an article in the London Quarterly Review, in 
1871, the conclusions arrived at through this very 
thorough investigation were summarized and re- 
viewed, and to that article the writer is indebted 
for the facts in this stage of the controversy. 

At the outset Mr. Twistleton calls attention to one 
peculiarity about these reports of Mr. Chabot's : 

" As far as is known, they are the only instance in 
which an expert has deliberately published the result 
of his investigations intb the handwriting of Junius 
and Francis; and most undoubtedly they are the 
only instance in which any such expert has writ- 
ten professionally, and subscribed his name to his 
opinion. Still, although Mr. Chabot has written his 
reports under professional responsibility, and they 
thus deserve to be read with more than ordinary at- 
tention, lie is desirous — and I publish his reports 
with the same desire — that his conclusions should in 



Junius and the Junius Quest. 279 

no respect be accepted on grounds of mere author- 
ity, but that they should be judged of entirely by the 
reasons which he advances in their behalf." 

In seeking to prove that the same person has made 
use of two radically different handwritings, it is im- 
portant to note the method adopted in the inquiry. 
An ordinary scrutiny would content itself with gen- 
eral comparisons, " without endeavoring to ascertain 
the principles which govern the handwriting, or the 
characteristic habits in the two styles under discus- 
sion. They thus form their judgment by the impres- 
sion left upon their minds by general similarity, 
without that careful examination of the peculiar and 
distinctive formations of different letters which char- 
acterize the writing. To prove that the documents 
were written by different hands, discrepancies must 
be pointed out in them which cannot be accounted 
for by accident or design. These principles are easy 
to understand, but to exemplify them in observations 
is by no means always easy." Without the use of 
the illustrations by which Mr. Chabot carries the 
reader along with him in his very painstaking in- 
quiry it would be useless to attempt an exhaustive 
description of the methods he employed. But we 
may state the general conclusion at which he arrived 



2S0 • Who Was He? 

in the well-nigh interminable controversy concerning 
the authorship of the Junian Letters. 

" I find generally," he says, " in the writing of the 
letters of Sir Philip Francis so much variety in the 
formation of all letters which admit of variety as to 
render his handwriting difficult to disguise in any 
ordinary manner, and consequently easy to identify. 
I discover also in the writing of the Letters and 
manuscripts of Junius variations in the formation of 
certain letters, in some cases very multifarious, and 
of frequent occurrence, and that these variations 
closely correspond with those observed in the writ- 
ing of Sir Philip Francis. They are, however, 
chiefly confined to the small letters in both hand- 
writings ; the habitual formation of capital letters 
being seldom departed from in any essential particu- 
lar in .either. I find also, in some instances, wmerein 
Junius makes exaggerated formations of certain let- 
ters, exact counterparts of them are to be found in 
the writing of Sir Philip Francis, and in some cases 
as nearly as possible with the same frequency. I 
further find in the handwriting of Sir Philip Francis 
a repetition of all, or nearly all, the leading features 
and peculiar habits of writing, independent of the 
formations of letters, which so distinguish the Jun- 



Junius and the Junius Quest. ■ 281 

ian writing. These are so numerous, so varied, and 
in some cases so distinctive, that, when taken collect- 
ively, it is scarcely within the limits of possibility 
that they can be found in the handwriting of any 
two persons. I am, therefore, irresistibly driven to 
the conclusion that the Junian manuscripts and the 
forty-four Letters of Francis have all been written by 
one and the same hand." 

To the trained eye of the expert it was obvious at 
a glance that the Letters of Junius were written in a 
feigned hand, for, says Mr. Chabot : 

" Upon examination, I find that the principal feat- 
ures of the disguise consist of the very common prac- 
tice of altering the accustomed slope, and, in many 
cases, writing in a smaller hand, whilst that which is 
of more importance, namely, the radical forms of let- 
ters, is repeatedly neglected. It is difficult, whilst 
the mind is engaged on the subject-matter of the 
writing, to avoid occasionally, indeed frequently, 
falling into some of the habits peculiar to the writer. 
The simple expedients of altering the usual slope 
and size of the writing may be maintained without 
difficulty, but it becomes very trying to attend to de- 
tails at the same time. I have never met with a 
writer who could do so and sustain a consistent and 



2S2 Who Was He? 

complete disguise throughout a piece of writing of 
moderate length." 

Xot the least among the salient points of the 
Junian calligraphy is the fineness of the strokes, and 
many who have looked at the MS. have remarked 
that the writer must have worked with a very fine 
pen. " The writing is finer and smaller than that of 
Francis, and a finely-made pen would be necessary to 
enable a person like Francis, who habitually wrote in 
a bold hand, to reduce the size of his writing." 
Moreover, a bold hand would naturally suggest, for 
the purpose of disguise, the adoption of a more del- 
icate and diminished style of w T riting for a disguised 
hand. Let us here enumerate a few instances of 
habits peculiar alike to Junius and Francis given by 
Mr. Chabot : 

1. The mode of dating letters. 

2. The placing a full stop after the salutation. 

3. The mode of signing initials between two dashes. 

4. Writing in paragraphs. 

5. Separating paragraphs by dashes placed between them at 
their commencement. 

0. Invariable attention to punctuation. 

7. The enlargement of the first letters of words. 

8. The insertion of omitted letters in the line of writing 



Junius and the Junius Quest. 283 

and not above it, and the various modes of correcting mis- 
writing. 

9. Mode of abbreviating words, and abbreviating the same 
words. 

10. Misspelling certain specified words. 

The scrupulous attention paid by both Junius and 
Francis to the matter of punctuation has also been 
noticed by Mr. Taylor in his Junius Identified: 

" Nothing affords greater scope for diversity of 
practice than the mode of punctuation. It is. a com- 
mon thing for writers to be very careless in this mat- 
ter ; but Junius and Sir Philip are particular in the 
use of stops, pointing with minute accuracy even the 
most trifling notes. The principle upon which this 
is done shows the closest conformity of plan. It may 
seem a trivial circumstance to some, but the introduc- 
tion of the short stroke — or dash — between words 
as well as sentences, to the degree in which it is done 
by both of them, is characteristic of the writers." 

The following remarks of Mr. Twistleton on the 
evidence adduced in the foregoing inquiry are worthy 
of note here : 

"It is to be remembered that the evidence of the 
identity of Junius and Francis as handwriters is 
cumulative ; that is to say, the force of the evidence 



2S4 Who Was He I 

depends not on any one single coincidence, but on 
numerous coincidences varying materially in their 
individual strength, which when viewed in connec- 
tion lead irresistibly to one inference alone, though 
each by itself may be inconclusive. A common fal- 
lacy in dealing with such evidence is to take each 
coincidence separately, and to show that a similar 
coincidence exists in some other writer. This would 
be a perfectly legitimate mode of reasoning if any 
one coincidence so dealt with were adduced as in 
itself conclusive ; but it fails to meet the require- 
ments of the case when the argument is based on 
the combination of many such coincidences collect- 
ively, and not on the separate existence of any one 
of them. . . . Commencing w T ith the facsimiles of 
the autographs of seventeen different contemporary 
writers, search should be made to ascertain how 
many of those twenty-eight habits co-exist in any 
other autographs ; and the ultimate point to be de- 
cided will be whether the combination of all of them 
in Junius and Francis can have been accidental." 

Another link in the chain of evidence forged by 
Mr. Chabot concerns the proof-sheets of the Letters 
returned to his printer by Francis. These proofs are 
preserved in the British Museum. " They contain 



Junius and the Junius Quest. 2S5 

various obliterations which, upon a narrow scrutiny, 
were found to conceal precisely the same words and 
figures as those which now stand in their places, and 
which are made to appear as corrections of the oblit- 
erated writing. The words obliterated are in the 
handwriting of Francis / the words written over 
them in that of Junius. This is especially seen in 
the dates of the Letters. The dates were not in- 
serted in the manuscripts as sent to the printer, but 
were added in the proof-sheets. It would seem that 
Francis, being more off his guard in correcting the 
proofs than in writing the Letters, inadvertently 
inserted the dates in his natural handwriting; but, 
upon discovering the mistake he had committed he 
carefully blotted out these dates, and rewrote them 
above the obliterations in his feigned hand. But, 
notwithstanding all the pains he took, the original 
writing can still be deciphered behind the oblitera- 
tions. To assist in concealing these inadvertencies, 
and perhaps for the purpose of misleading those who 
might seek to lay them bare, Francis, previously to 
making the broad marks of defacement, tampered 
with the writing, by the introduction of superfluous 
letters or portions of them— a practice often resorted 
to when obliterations are made in wills, but which 



286 Who Was He? 

generally fails in effecting its object, as in the pres- 
ent case." 

After this accumulation of evidence can any one 
doubt that the Letters of Junius were written by 
Francis ? Yet there are many who are still un- 
convinced. Of course the examples given are but a 
tithe of those presented by this accomplished expert, 
but all in all they derive their most telling effect 
from their cumulative character. Singly, their' force 
is striking ; collectively, they are deemed by many 
well-nigh conclusive from the difficulty of explaining 
their similarity ' through any possible accidental re- 
semblances. 

But one of the most interesting and romantic epi- 
sodes of this inquiry into the Junian and Franciscan 
handwriting remains to be narrated. Who would 
imagine that a love-letter could supply an important 
clue in determining the author of epistles breath- 
ing biting sarcasm and bitter invective ? Says Twis- 
tleton : 

" In the Christmas season of 1770 or 1771, when 
Mr. Francis was on a visit to his father at Bath, he 
danced at the Assembly Kooms more than one even- 
ing with a young lady named Miss Giles. This lady, 
born in 1751, was a daughter of Daniel Giles, Esq., 



Junius and the Junius Quest. 287 

afterward Governor of the Bank of England ; and in 
January, 1772, she became Mrs. King by marrying 
Joseph King, Esq., of Taplow. It was the custom at 
balls a hundred years ago for a lady to retain the 
same partner during the whole of the evening ; .so 
that the fact of Miss Giles having thus danced with 
Mr. Francis would imply more of an acquaintance 
than would necessarily be involved in a young lady's 
dancing with a gentleman at the present day." 

One result of this acquaintance was that a set of 
verses, accompanied by an anonymous note, was sent 
to Miss Giles. The writer of the note declared that 
he had found the verses, which were unaddressed, 
and that he could not conceive for whom they were 
meant unless for her. The anonymous note ran as 
follows : 

1 ' The inclosed paper of Verses was found this morning by 
Accident. The person who found them, not knowing to 
whom they belong, is obliged to trust to his own Judgment, 
and takes for granted that they could only be meant for Miss 
Giles." 

•The verses were : 

" When Nature has, happily, finished her Part, 
There is Work enough left for the Graces ; 

'Tis harder to keep than to conquer the Heart; 
We admire and forget pretty Faces. 



2S8 Who Was He? 

" In the School of the Grace?, by Venus attended, 

Belinda improves ev'ry hour; 
They tell her that Beauty itself may be mended, 

And shew her the use of her Pow'r. 

" They alone have instructed the fortunate Maid 

In Motion, in Speech, and Address; 
They gave her that wonderful Smile to persuade, 

And the Language of Looks to express. 

" They directed her Eye, they pointed the Dart, 

And have taught her a dangerous Skill ; 
For whether she aims at the Head or the Heart, 

She can wound, if she pleases, or kill." 

At the time their fair recipient suspected that 
Francis was the author, but of course said nothing. 
Though she subsequently became the wife of another 
gentleman she preserved the verses and the anony- 
mous note. Many years afterward it fell out that a 
scrap of Junins's handwriting was being handed 
round in the circle in which she happened to be. 
"Why," exclaimed Mrs. King, "I know that writing. 
The person who wrote that wrote me some verses 
and a letter ! " 

The verses and the note in question " were written 
each on a separate sheet of common letter paper, and 
the handwriting of the two is different. The reason 



Junius and the Junius Quest. 289 

of this is obvious. The humor of the compliment 
required such a difference. The two documents, 
though wholly unconnected with St. Valentine's 
Day, must be regarded in the light of a valentine ; 
the essential idea of which is, that whereas certain 
verses in praise of a young lady had been found by 
accident, Miss Giles alone merited such praise, and 
tlie verses were therefore sent to her as the person 
for whom they were intended. Hence it would have 
been out of keeping with the plan of the valentine if 
the verses and the note had been in the same hand- 
writing." 

The linking of these twin documents with the solu- 
tion of the query, Who wrote the Letters of Junius ? 
we will now explain. The anonymous note is in 
the handwriting of Junius, the verses are in the 
handwriting of Francis's cousin, Tilghman. But 
at first it was thought that the verses were in the 
natural handwriting of Francis. Mr. Twistleton and 
a number of experts and others were of this opinion. 
But here the plot thickened. To clearly establish 
this hypothesis Twistleton applied to Netherclift, the 
famous expert, who had previously examined the 
handwriting of the anonymous note, for an opinion. 

But that gentleman, in consequence of illness, could 
19 



290 Who Was He? 

not undertake the labor of an investigation, so the 
case was placed in the hands of Chabot. But 
Chabot, after comparing the verses with the letters 
of Francis, pronounced an opinion directly contrary 
to what was expected. He maintained, not only that 
" he should not be justified in stating that the verses 
were in the handwriting of Francis, for he thought 
he could prove the negative — that Francis had not 
and could not have written the verses," and in cor- 
roboration of his opinion he pointed out numerous 
peculiarities of writing in the verses which were not 
in the letters, and vice-versa. Mr. Twistleton, we 
are told, at once acquiesced in the professional opin- 
ion of Mr. Chabot ; but recollecting from the re- 
cently published " Life of Francis " that his cousin 
and familiar friend, Mr. Richard Tilghman, was with 
Francis at Bath when the verses were sent to Miss 
Giles, it struck Mr. Twistleton that Francis might 
possibly have availed himself of the services of 
Tilghman as an amanuensis. Fortunately, in the 
letter-book of Francis, which was in Mr. Twistle- 
ton's possession, there were six letters written to 
Francis by Tilghman. These were now submitted, 
together with the verses, to Mr. Chabot, who ex- 
pressed his unhesitating conviction that the verses 



Junius and the Junius Quest. 291 

were in the handwriting of Tilghman. From which 
it would seem that u Francis, with his usual caution, 
was unwilling to bring his own handwriting into any 
connection with that of Junius, and accordingly wrote 
the anonymous note himself in the Junian hand, em- 
ploying Tilghman to copy the verses, who probably 
never saw the note." The latter, as we have seen, is 
in the disguised upright hand of Sir Philip Francis, 
identical with that in which the Junian Letters were 
penned. That the two documents were really sent 
by Francis to Miss Giles there is no reasonable 
doubt. Out of the foregoing inquiry as to who 
wrote the love-letter and the accompanying verses 
grew the greater investigation undertaken by Chabot 
into the whole of the Junian correspondence, the 
results of which we have already seen.. 

That Sir Philip publicly and in the strongest terms 
denied the authorship of the Letters of Junius is very 
well known, but by that denial one is only reminded 
of the reply said to have been made under similar 
circumstances by the famed author of Ecce Homo : 
" Why, if I had written it, you know, I should cer- 
tainly say I hadn't." 

The following passage occurs in Lord Malmesbury's 
Memoirs of an Ex-Minister. According to Lord 



292 Who Was He? 

Tankerville, " it was supposed that Francis intended 
his name to be disclosed after his death, and had left 
papers establishing his identity with 'Junius,' but 
they were destroyed by his son-in-law. He deter- 
mined not to acknowledge himself as the author of 
those Letters during his lifetime, and disliked to be 
asked questions on the subject. One evening at 
Brooks's, the conversation having fallen on a book 
just published which proved Francis to be Junius, 
Kogers, the poet, went up to him and said, 'Sir 
Philip, will you allow me to ask you a question ? ' 
To which the other replied very fiercely, 'Yes, sir, 
at your peril.' Upon which Rogers turned round 
to some one near him and said, ' If he is Junius, he is 
Junius Brutus.' " 

The following concise and able summary of the 
w r hole subject is from the pen of Mr. R. Garnett, 
who evinces an intimate acquaintance with the mazes 
of the Junius Quest : 

" The external evidence for the Franciscan author- 
ship of Junius, then, appears as strong as could be 
reasonably expected. The impression left by the 
whole investigation cannot be better summed up 
than in the words of Mr. Merivale : All the lines of 
investigation which have been followed in order to 



Junius and the Junius Quest. 293 

trace the authorship of this or that known individual, 
except Francis, fail at a certain point. They end in 
impossibilities. The remaining path, to which one 
clue only leads us, becomes plainer and plainer the 
further the investigation is conducted. The ingenu- 
ity of most formidable opponents has been exerted to 
discover some demonstrable incompatibility between 
the circumstances attending the production of the 
letters and the authorship of Francis. None such 
has been adduced. Francis, as was said of Godol- 
phin, is never in the way and never out of the way. 
The one argument against him is derived from the 
evidence of style. But the distinction established is 
rather one of degree than of kind. There is no such 
incompatibility between the style of his acknowledged 
writings and that of the Junius Letters as to render it 
morally impossible to attribute them to the same 
writer. It is not as though a pamphlet attributed to 
Swift should bear the impress of Bolingbroke. The 
admitted productions of Francis might pass for the 
work of a disciple of Junius. The real difficulty is, 
that Francis should never have equaled himself. 
This certainly is a difficulty, and is hardly obviated 
by Lord Macaulay's sensible but somewhat superficial 
reply, that every work of the same author cannot be 



294 Who Was He? 

the best. It can hardly, however, be held to count 
for much against the weight of external testimony, 
especially when the extraordinary moral resemblance 
between Francis and Junius is taken into account. 
Whoever Junius was, he must have been in tempera- 
ment very much such a man as Francis is known to 
have been — vehement, combative, opinionated, dis- 
dainful, sarcastic, enthusiastically and disinterestedly 
devoted to the public good as he conceived it, but 
capable of the most unrelenting and unscrupulous 
animosity to all who crossed his path. To appreciate 
these characteristics it is essential to follow the next 
episode in his career. Appointed to a magnificent 
employment, a seat at the council of the Governor- 
General of India, with a suddenness which certainly 
suggests the suspicion that his secret had become 
known, he quitted England for Calcutta in 1774. 
His official career w r as a constant series of disputes 
with the Governor-General, Warren Hastings, culmi- 
nating in a duel, in which he was seriously wounded. 
It is difficult to pronounce positively as to the merits 
of the controversy. Infinitely inferior to Hastings in 
administrative capacity, Francis does appear to have 
possessed more enlightened views as to the duties of 
government, and to have wished to introduce a spirit 



Junius and the Junius Quest. 2G5 

of equity and clemency into the administration of 
Bengal which would have greatly benefited it. Un- 
able to contend with the genius and fortune of his 
rival, he forsook India in disgust, retiring, however, 
with a large fortune, said to have been partly ac- 
quired by high play. On the return of Hastings he 
became the life and soul of the memorable impeach- 
ment directed against him, his whole behavior during 
which, both as regards his unmitigated virulence and 
his underhand method of action, tends as strongly as 
any other proof to confirm his identity with Junius. 
When, in his extreme old age, the authorship was first 
publicly imputed to him he neither denied nor ad- 
mitted it, but his demeanor showed that he wished it 
to be believed.'' 

Says Macaulay, in answer to the query, Was Philip 
Francis the author of the Letters of Junius ? 

"Our own firm belief is that he was. The evi- 
dence is, we think, such as would support a verdict 
in a civil, nay, in a criminal proceeding. The hand- 
writing of Junius is the very peculiar handwriting of 
Francis, slightly disguised. As to the position, pur- 
suits, and connections of Junius, the following are 
the most important facts which can be considered as 
clearly proved : 1. That he was acquainted with the 



296 Who Was He? 

technical forms of the Secretary of State's office ; 
2. That he was intimately acquainted with the busi- 
ness of the War Office ; 3. That he, during the year 
1770, attended debates in the House of Lords, and 
took notes of speeches, particularly of the speeches of 
Lord Chatham ; 4. That he bitterly resented the ap- 
pointment of Mr. Chamier to the place of Deputy 
Secretary at War ; 5. That he was bound by some 
strong tie to the first Lord Holland. Now, Francis 
passed some years in the Secretary of State's office. 
He was subsequently chief clerk of the War Office. 
He repeatedly mentioned that he had himself, in 
1770, heard speeches of Lord Chatham, and some of 
these speeches were actually printed from his notes. 
He resigned his clerkship at the War Office from re- 
sentment at the appointment of Mr. Chamier. It 
was by Lord Holland that he was first introduced 
into the public service. Now, here are five marks, 
all of which ought to be found in Junius. They are 
all five found in Francis. We do not believe that 
more than two of them can be found in any other 
person whatever. If this argument does not settle 
the question, there is an end of all reasoning on cir- 
cumstantial evidence. 

"The internal evidence seems to us to pcint the 



Junius and the Junius Quest. 23 7 

same way. The style of Francis bears a strong re- 
semblance to that of Junius ; nor are we disposed to 
admit, what is generally taken for granted, that the 
acknowledged compositions of Francis are very decid- 
edly inferior to the anonymous letters. The argu- 
ment from inferiority at all events is one which may 
be urged with at least equal force against every claim- 
ant that has ever been mentioned with the single 
exception of Burke ; and it would be a waste of time 
to prove that Burke was not Junius. And what con- 
clusion, after all, can be drawn from mere inferi- 
ority ? Every writer must produce his best work ; 
and the interval between his best work and his sec- 
ond best work may be very wide indeed. Nobody 
will say that the best letters of Junius are more 
decidedly superior to the acknowledged works of 
Francis than three or four of Corneille's tragedies to 
the rest, than three or four of Ben Jonson's comedies 
to the rest, than the Pilgrims Progress to the other 
works of Bunyan, than Don Quixote to the other 
works of Cervantes. Nay, it is certain that Junius, 
whoever he may have been, was a most unequal writer. 
To go no further than the letters which bear the sig- 
nature of Junius, the Letter to the King and the Let- 
ters to Home Tooke have little in common except 



208 Who Was He? 

the asperity ; and asperity was an ingredient seldom 
wanting either in the writings or in the speeches of 
Francis. 

" Indeed, one of the strongest reasons for believing 
that Francis was Junius is the moral resemblance be- 
tween the two men. It is not difficult, from the let- 
ters which, under various signatures, are known to 
have been written by Junius, and from his dealings 
with Woodfall and others, to form a tolerably correct 
notion of his character. He was clearly a man not 
destitute of real patriotism and magnanimity, a man 
whose vices were not of the sordid kind. But he 
must also have been a man in the highest degree ar- 
rogant and insolent, a man prone to malevolence, and 
prone to the error of mistaking his private malevo- 
lence for public virtue. * Doest thou well to be an- 
gry ? ' was the question asked in old time of the He- 
brew prophet. And he answered : * I do well.' This 
was evidently the temper of Junius, and to this cause 
we attribute the savage cruelty which disgraces sev- 
eral of his Letters. No man is so merciless as he who 
under a strong self-delusion confounds his antipathies 
with his duties. It may be added that Junius, 
though allied with the democratic party by common 
enmities, was the very opposite of a democratic poli- 



Junius and the Junius Quest. 209 

tician. While attacking individuals with a ferocity 
which perpetually violated all the laws of literary 
warfare, he regarded the most defective parts of old 
institutions with a respect amounting to pedantry, 
pleaded the cause of Old' Sarum with fervor, and 
contemptuously told the capitalists of Manchester 
and Leeds that if they wanted votes they might buy 
land and become freeholders of Lancashire and 
Yorkshire. All this, we believe, might stand, with 
scarcely any change, for a character of Philip 
Francis." 

In the .face of this judgment from so high an 
authority it would be rash to affirm with certainty 
that the quest of the Junius seekers has been unre- 
warded. On the other hand, Mr. Pitt told Lord 
Aberdeen that he knew who wrote the Junius let- 
ters, and that it was not Francis! Lady Grenville 
sent a letter to the editor of the Diaries of a Lady 
of Qitality to the same effect. 

The late Abraham Hayward, critic and essayist, 
wrote a pamphlet on the Junius mystery, in 1868, in 
order to disprove the claims of Sir Philip Francis. 
In the judgment of Sir Alexander Cockburn he 
successfully demolished the case for the defendant. 
And in an article in the London Quarterly Review 



300 Who Was He? 

Mr. Hay ward leaned toward Lord George Sackville, 
for whom, he told a correspondent, he " could make 
out a capital case if he thought it worth, while." 
But afterward he "settled down in the belief that 
the famous Letters were supplied by the Grenvilles, 
but did not come to a conclusion as to which of 
them, if either, was the actual writer of them. He 
did not doubt that Pitt knew who the writer was. 
No doubt Sir Philip Francis desired it to be be- 
lieved that he was the author, and tried to leave 
proofs of his claim." But, as one of Mr. Hayward's 
correspondents points out, the real Junius, had three 
sets of the letters bound in a specific fashion, and had 
Francis been the author he could have produced 
or accounted for these books. 

The writer has no new name to advance, nor any 
novel theory to broach, seeing that he has no desire 
to be ranked among those foolish ones who " rush in 
where angels fear to tread." If he has succeeded in 
holding the attention of the reader, or in affording 
an hours amusement by recounting the salient 
features of this " strange eventful history," his ob- 
ject will have been attained. 



